


Fiction Romance

by EntreNous



Series: Fiction Romance [1]
Category: Actor RPF, Pinto - Fandom, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Mob, Bisexual Character, Consent Issues, Deal with a Devil, Debt, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Italian Mafia, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mob Boss Zach, Power Dynamics, Rent Boy Chris, Rentboys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-22 03:39:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7418350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Pine, college student and nervous wreck, somehow gets in over his head with gambling debts.  With no money to pay what he owes, he'll have to rely on the generosity of Mr. Zachary Quinto, a powerful mob boss with a shark-like grin and a keen interest in some of the other assets Chris has to offer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story began as a series of tumblr ficlets (at that time imaginatively titled Rent Boy Pinto), but quickly morphed into a longer fic that's now my entry for the 2016 WIP Big Bang. I'll post new chapters on Tuesdays and Thursdays until the final installment goes up on my community posting date of June 21st. 
> 
> Many thanks to [RowanBaines](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RowanBaines/) and [thatotherperv](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thatotherperv) for their helpful beta input. And much gratitude for [silent-bridge](http://silent-bridge.tumblr.com/), who created a gorgeous graphic for this story -- you can view it here: [Fiction Romance (aka Rent Boy Pinto AU)](http://silent-bridge.tumblr.com/post/147046232889/fiction-romance-by-entrenous88-aka-rent-boy)
> 
> For anyone who checks this out, I really hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear what you think!

"I think you'll find I'm a very reasonable man, Mr. Pine," the man in the expensive black suit tells Chris. He sounds almost bored from his long-legged sprawl on the leather bench of the town car. But when Chris catches his gaze, he can't miss the intense look in those dark brown eyes. 

"Um," Chris says slowly, because how's he supposed to agree with someone that he's reasonable when that dude's just had his goons basically kidnap Chris and haul him out to the desert to have this totally insane one-on-one that Chris definitely didn't sign up for?

"For instance, if you were to continue dealing with Mr. Mangianelli directly, I think he wouldn't be half so understanding about your debts," the man says in an offhand way. He takes the tumbler his silent associate hands him, the glass clinking with ice cubes and half-filled with some amber liquid that Chris would guess costs more for a single shot than he spent on his stupidly pricey Econ textbook. 

Chris gapes for a second. Partly because he's only just starting to recover from being shoved face-down into the sand by goons while Expensive Black Suit had walked slowly up to him, only his fine Italian shoes in Chris's line of sight. And partly, because he's not quite sure why he went from being roughed up and shouted at to being hauled by his armpits to sit across from Expensive Black Suit in this idling air-conditioned limo. 

But mainly he's slack-jawed because how the hell does this random guy know about Chris's dumb poker debts? 

"Whereas I like a more flexible approach when considering all the possible solutions to a problem," the man continues. His eyes drift slowly down Chris's body and back up again. "Don't you agree that's a better method?"

"Sure," Chris says after a pause. Being agreeable sounds like a good bet for now. He's fairly certain at least two of the goons, now standing outside the car and smoking, are armed to the teeth. And he wouldn't be surprised if Expensive Black Suit was packing something dangerous too. 

Then Expensive Black Suit smiles slightly, and Chris's mouth goes dry in a way that's got nothing to do with the hot desert winds outside. 

"I'm glad we're on the same page," the man tells him. He keeps his eyes on Chris as he takes a slow sip of his drink, like he's savoring more than just the taste. 

"So," Chris says at last. He slides his clammy palms forward on his jeans, trying to dry them. "What's your, um, solution to the problem?" He can't keep his voice from shaking; he's been trying to calculate in his head exactly how much money he owes but he's always been shit with numbers. 

Expensive Black Suit swirls his glass thoughtfully before he tips it back for another swallow. Chris watches his throat and swallows too. 

Silent Associate unexpectedly speaks up. "Tell us, Mr. Pine, do you have the money?"

"Do I have the money?" Chris asks incredulously. He'd been stumbling down The Strip at around 5 a.m. when the black car had glided up and three men had muscled him inside. He'd barely thought beyond trying to find a decent cup of coffee that wasn't attached to an elaborate breakfast buffet; odds are he's got less than twenty bucks in his wallet. 

Silent Associate moves his hand like maybe he's about to slip it inside of his double-breasted suit jacket.

"I mean, not _on_ me," Chris says quickly. "I could -- we could work something out, definitely, uh, in terms of payment? Like maybe -- do you have installment plans?"

Expensive Black Suit presses his lips together, and Chris thinks, _oh fuck, now I've made him really mad._ But when he trains his eyes hysterically on him to watch for the outcome, the dread in his chest pressing against his ribcage like a monster trying to claw out, he realizes the guy is sort of...trying to keep from laughing. Which is pretty fucking frightening, actually. 

"I'm not even totally sure how much it is," Chris admits even though the part of his brain still online shouts that babbling about his debts is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea. But fuck, he's so scared, and he can't stop the words from coming out of his mouth. 

He turns to Silent Associate, because at least he's not a potentially crazy person laughing at Chris's floundering when there's a ton of money and possibly Chris's life on the line. "Like, I only played a few nights back in San Francisco, seriously. You know those games you only get into if you know someone? This guy from my Econ class hooked me up, and it was like you see in the movies, with the secret back room in a restaurant? Anyway, I kind of got in the hole way faster than I expected."

Silent Associate raises an eyebrow.

"I won a couple of hands for sure, don't get me wrong! It's not like I'm totally crap at cards, because I never would have gone if I couldn't win. It's just that my luck went sour. So I thought if I could just get into a seriously high-stakes game, and make all the money back, it would be no big deal, and everyone would be happy. So when Mr. Mangianelli said I could borrow the cash for the Vegas game I found out about--" 

"You don't know exactly how much it is that you owe," Silent Associate clarifies.

Chris licks his lips and shakes his head. 

Expensive Black Suit sets his glass down. It's like he's just randomly listening in to the conversation with no horse in the race even though he's clearly the one in charge. Chris looks wildly at his long fingers curled around the fancy crystal tumbler, just so he can have something to focus on.

Silent Associate flips open a tiny leather notebook. Next, he writes something inside it with a glossy pen. Finally, carefully, he detaches the paper and folds it part way before holding it out.

Chris has to grab for it twice, because his vision's gone a little hazy with worry, staring at Expensive Black Suit's hand like that. He has to blink a couple of times to refocus. Plus his throat feels so choked with apprehension that he's not sure he'll be able to form concrete words for a while.

When he stares at the sum, though, he instantly says, "Wait, no. That can't be right. I mean, when Mr. Mangianelli said he would cover my previous debts and front me the loan -- I just think, you know, there's been a mix-up somewhere --"

"There is interest, of course," Silent Associate says.

"There's interest," Chris repeats in shock. Maybe Mr. Mangianelli had talked about that when he agreed to let Chris have the cash. It's really hard to remember, though. Chris might have still been a little high at the time (he'd smoked up out in the back alley at one point, with a couple of the bus boys). He'd definitely taken a shot for liquid courage, so he could convince himself to make his way over to the dour looking man sitting in the banquette booth. Otherwise he wouldn't have had the nerve to get past the four shifty guys looming in front of it who had been scanning the room like guard dogs. 

"Obviously, the interest will only increase," Silent Associate adds.

"Have dinner with me," Expensive Black Suit says abruptly.

Chris has only ever done a double-take in his acting class before. It always seemed like such a dumb clichéd reaction, but they'd been doing a scene from Moliere, and there was a whole big reveal. He couldn't deny that it had worked really well in the moment; his professor had praised him especially for his depiction of surprise.

But now he doesn't need to fake it. He glances at Expensive Black Suit quickly before he turns his attention back to Silent Associate and the problem of that crazy huge number on the piece of paper. But when he processes the words, he balks and snaps his gaze back, because _what the fuck_?

"What the fuck?" Chris asks them both. He only realizes that his eyes have gone super wide in astonishment when the throbbing of his hangover turns into an agonizing drumbeat in his head.

"Mr. Quinto," Silent Associate murmurs.

"Have dinner with me," Mr. Quinto repeats insistently, as though his well-heeled toady isn't still trying to get his attention with not-so-subtle throat clearing. 

"Hang on," Chris says. He presses his palm against his forehead, trying to take aim at the ever-increasing ache, and mentally assigning a new name to Expensive Black Suit. "Are you asking me to have dinner with you? Or are you ordering me to have dinner with you? And either way, _why_?" 

"Tuesday night," Mr. Quinto continues. He slips one of his long fingers into his double old-fashioned glass and stirs what remains of his drink. "I'm sure if we spend a little time together, we can address my concerns regarding your financial obligations in a way that will be...mutually satisfying." 

Chris waits for someone to come up with a punchline to this wacky turn of events, possibly followed by an actual punch. It was only an hour ago that this guy's lackeys were scrambling to land blows on Chris, after all. But the man seated across from him appears utterly serious.

"Um. Dinner here?" Chris jerks his thumb at the tinted window, not meaning the desert obviously, but Las Vegas. 

Tuesday afternoon he's supposed to give a presentation in his Chaucer seminar back at Berkeley, so it's not like he can skip out on that. On the other hand, missing a class isn't going to matter much in the long run if some mob boss decides to crush him like a bug. So maybe he should keep his plans flexible?

"Nino?" Mr. Quinto says smoothly. 

Silent Associate -- Nino, apparently -- exhales slowly. Given how even-keeled he's been the entire time, Chris guesses that's him showing he's at the end of his rope. But Nino gets it together enough to extract a slim silver case from his breast pocket and withdraw a business card from it. 

"Someone will be in touch with you about the details for a dinner meeting in Los Angeles," Nino says flatly. 

"How the hell am I supposed to get to L.A.?" Chris asks. "I go to B-- I mean, I'm in the Bay area, not SoCal."

"Arrangements will be made." Nino hands the card over between two fingers, like he doesn't want to brush against Chris's hand accidentally. "Meanwhile, should you have any pressing questions, you may call that number."

Dumbly, Chris snags the card and shoves into the back pocket of his jeans. 

"Nino will see that you get back to your hotel," Mr. Quinto says. He immediately turns his attention to a phone he's produced from somewhere, scrolling down the screen intently like Chris has already left the car. 

Chris does leave a moment later, of course, silently waved out by Nino into the rush of hot air. 

Back in the blaze of the sun, the second car (the one that brought Chris to this godforsaken spot in the first place) waits, its engine running at a low purr. One of the goons from earlier steps out of it and brushes by Chris and Nino without so much as a second glance, heading straight for the first car with Mr. Quinto. 

Chris glances back as the car door opens and slams. It's way past sunrise now, and the glaring light and oppressive heat glimmer around the sedan, blurring its sleek lines. Chris can't see inside, what with the tinted windows, but the sense he's being watched makes him shiver despite the searing temperature.

Moments later, the black town car pulls away with a fine spray of sand.

"What just happened?" Chris demands. "And hey, what if I'm not around on Tuesday for this dinner thing?"

"If you have other plans that night, I strongly suggest you cancel them," Nino says calmly. "Mr. Quinto is being....very generous. I recommend you don't try his patience."

There are about eight million more questions Chris wants to ask. But when Nino sweeps a hand toward the waiting car, a move that manages to seem both weirdly chivalrous and aggressively impatient, Chris silently stumbles on ahead of him.

* * *

Late Monday afternoon, after John listens to the entire insane recitation of Chris's mob meeting, he claps a hand on Chris's shoulder. "Man," he says finally. "That totally sucks." He pauses, a concerned look on his face. "Do you think he's going to kill you?"

"I don't know! Fuck, don't say things like that!" When Chris looks around in a panic he catches a glimpse of guys on the quad just outside his window, tossing a Frisbee around. The easy carelessness of the way they laugh and sprint makes his throat close up. 

"Okay, okay, sorry! I was just trying to help." 

Chris presses a hand against his chest and breathes in, shaky. "How the hell is that supposed to help?"

"Well, you have to think about all the possibilities so you can weigh your options." John flops onto Chris's futon and punches one of the scattered lumpy pillows a couple of times before stuffing it behind his head. 

The Frisbee guys outside are calling to each other and walking away, maybe off to class or going to buy coffees. One's got his arm slung across another guy's shoulders, and he leans in as they stroll off, saying something that makes them both grin. 

"Do you think I should get out of town?" Chris asks. "Leave the west coast -- maybe even leave the country?" In between trying to keep up with his lit reading and finishing Econ problem sets, he's been obsessively checking bus and train schedules, plotting circuitous routes. He twists halfway in his desk chair to face John more directly. "Dude, do you have people I can stay with in Korea?"

John gapes at him. "Do I have people -- that's fucking racist, man. You just assume, what, there's some whole village of people I'm related to back in Korea?"

"I'm sorry," Chris says miserably.

"And yes, I have a bunch of relatives in Korea," John continues, choosing another pillow to prop up the first one. "But they have their own lives. My cousin Henry's busy studying for the bar. Do you think I should tell him to set aside all those case books just to keep you hidden from Mister Mob Boss?"

"But Mister Mob Boss might kill me; you said so yourself," Chris protests. "And I could help Cousin Henry study for his law thing."

"How?"

"Uh...I could make a bunch of flash cards?"

"Because you assume naturally he reads enough English to use your stupid flash cards."

Chris looks up, eyes wide. "I--"

"As a matter of fact, my cousin reads and speaks English fluently -- whereas you, my friend, are barely passing your French class." John shakes his head in evident disappointment at Chris's lack of linguistic talent as well as his bigoted cultural assumptions. 

Chris lets his head fall back down on the desk; the dull _thunk_ against the particle board top reverberates in his skull. "John! Focus! I don't want to die!"

"Calm down," John tells him. "Anyway, I don't think Mister Mob Boss is really going to kill you. Wait, when are you seeing him again?"

"I got a couple of texts about it this morning. Tuesday -- tomorrow night-- like he said, for dinner." Chris glances at John and decides to leave out the detail about how he's flying out to Los Angeles for the meeting. The texts included a link to a one-way electronic ticket, and instructions about heading to the part of the airport for charter and private planes. 

A weird part of him had registered relief as he'd stared at his phone. He'd been half-heartedly thinking he'd borrow someone's car and get on the road to L.A. right after his presentation ends. But now it seems he'll be flown out in some kind of style. Still, mentioning that part to John just feels odd. Having a dinner date with a mobster is one fucked up thing; getting flown to L.A. on a private plane is on another level of insanity.

"Dinner," John repeats. "Well, if he was going to off you, wouldn't he have had one of his henchmen do it while you were in the middle of the desert with nobody around, instead of taking you out for a nice meal?"

Chris covers his head with his arms and whimpers, because that very scenario -- lackeys forcing him to his knees on the sand and aiming a gun at his temple -- has been the vivid subject of two nightmares already. "I don't know," he mumbles. 

"Speak up, Pine."

Chris shoves back his desk chair, staggering a couple of steps so he can collapse beside John on the futon. "I said I don't know! I don't know why he didn't just break my legs, because the whole thing was headed in that direction for sure, and I definitely don't know what he's going to do now."

"Aww, he's not going to break your legs," John soothes him. He glances down at Chris's shins. "Probably."

Chris lies very, very still for a few moments. Then he kicks his heels and beats his fists against the futon and shouts, "I need a solution to this fucked up situation, and I need it now!"

"Chill out, seriously," John tells him, patting his arm. "Let's start with the facts. How much money do you owe this asshole?"

Chris still has the paper Nino handed him back in Vegas. He's been keeping it in his pocket like a horrible cursed talisman the past two days, staring at it whenever the panic rises high and he starts wondering whether he's dreamed this entire thing. So he digs it out now and tosses it toward John. 

The paper flutters in the air, landing on John's collarbone. John extracts it from his puka shell necklace and examines it.

Several excruciating seconds go by while John says absolutely nothing.

Then --

"Dude! What the fucking fuck?"

"It added up really fast," Chris says defensively. "The first games -- and the rounds just keep going -- and I was winning, at first!"

"This is a fuck-ton of money! How did he _not_ kill you?"

"Oh my god," Chris says under his breath.

"Okay, okay, let's think." John flips onto his side, face utterly serious now. "Can you get money from your savings?"

"If I could just withdraw the cash, do you think I would be so worried about this? Or that I would have borrowed that insane amount in the first place?"

John nods absently, rubbing his chin. "How about your folks? Can you ask for some of it from them?"

"Are you kidding me? They don't have this kind of cash. They've taken out a second mortgage on the house as it is, to send me here and to help Katie out with her grad school stuff."

"They might be able to borrow a chunk of it, though," John suggests. "I get not wanting to ask them, Chris, or explain the shit you're in. But I think this qualifies as a serious fucking emergency."

"I can't tell them that I owe this much! Or why! Plus they wouldn't be able to round up funds like that in time for tonight."

John nods earnestly and toes off his Birkenstocks. "All right. Straight talk. How much cash do you have right now?"

Chris has to swallow before he can answer; his mouth's totally dry. "A couple hundred."

"I've got, like, one fifty I can get out of the ATM," John offers. "It can't be more than that, or I'd be overdrawn again and the bank would email my dad."

"It's nowhere near enough," Chris mutters.

"But hey, maybe we could take all of it and lay it in a briefcase, on top of bricks or something? When you see him, flash it, a flick of the wrist type thing, and show him the money on top. Then turn tail and run like hell."

"I'm not going to take your money. Besides, he's not going to buy that anyway. Plus I bet he'd find me after even if I did manage to give him the slip."

"Well, shit," John says feelingly.

"I'll just, I don't know, write a letter explaining everything in case I die," Chris says to himself. He looks at John, who's staring at him with a startled expression. "Can I trust you to give a letter to my parents if I don't show up back at the dorm in a couple of days and you haven't seen my body on the news or whatever?"

"Dude, no. You have _got_ to think positive," John tells him. "Please, do not write your death letter."

"Well, what the hell should I do?"

"I don't know. But everything's going to work out somehow. When you meet Mister Mob Boss tomorrow, see if maybe you can work off how much you owe him." John pauses as he thinks about that. "Maybe offer to run some errands, or say you'll threaten a couple of rubes in exchange for the money. I mean, he's practically obligated to hire you if he ever wants to see the cash again. You know, it could almost be like a work-study thing."

Chris covers his face with his hands and does his level best not to hyperventilate.

* * *

Chris gulps down his third coke and keeps right on tapping his fingers against the leather club chair he's been installed in for the last hour and a half. It's been driving him nuts that he didn't bring a book like he usually does. Between flying into L.A., being ferried around the Hollywood Hills, and cooling his heels at this sparsely furnished modernist spread, he could be halfway through _Chaucer's Sexual Poetics_ by now. But he hadn't figured on much down time, what with the panicking about money and gearing himself up for whatever threats this Quinto guy was going to hurl at him.

"Okay, this was supposed to start at like 7pm, right?" Chris finally asks the guy who silently greeted him at the door forever ago. 

Mister Bartender Man glances up, still standing behind the sleek blue steel and frosted glass bar in the corner of the room, and shrugs. He's been pouring Chris sodas for the last while like it's his main job. He might be one of the dudes from the desert, though Chris's memories of that day are hazy. At the very least, Mister Bartender Man has that generic mobster look to him: a deep navy suit on the flashy side of expensive, eyes that scan the room repeatedly even though they're the only two in the house as far as Chris can tell, and overly-styled hair that does not look like it would droop even if he was caught out in a hurricane. 

"Because it's like 9:30 now," Chris adds helpfully. "And I don't get why Mr. Quinto would fly me out here -- on some crazy high roller plane, by the way, on which I was the only passenger -- and get a limo to take me to your super-secret hideout if he's just going to stand me up."

Finally Mister Bartender Man meets his eye. It's only slightly less creepy than when he stared Chris down the couple of times Chris stood up to use the bathroom in the hallway. "If Mr. Quinto says he's going to be here, he'll be here."

"Okay, but when --" Chris starts to say irritably, but the sound of gravel crunching stops him. High-beam headlights sweep past the windows and then turn off as an engine cuts out. 

Mister Bartender Man leaves the room without another word, headed not to the front of the house where the car has pulled around, but slipping down the hall in the opposite direction.

A murmur of voices rises outside, maybe three or four people conferring quietly. Chris tightens his fingers on the chair's arms as a door somewhere else in the house opens. Then there's rustling and what sounds like drawers opening. Finally Chris hears the back door click shut, followed by car doors slamming outside. 

He can't imagine what the hell is actually going on, but if all the various low voices and indeterminate openings and closings are designed to make him freak out, well hey. Mission accomplished.

When the vehicle in the driveway starts up again, the front door opens.

"Mr. Pine," Mr. Quinto says as he strolls into the room.

Chris grips his knees tightly. "Yeah," he manages in a strained voice.

"I imagine you've already heard that I was unavoidably detained," Mr. Quinto continues. He ambles over to the bar and begins to fix a drink. 

Chris has nothing to say to that, because even though at this point he's starving and confused and starting to feel pretty fucking indignant, he's so not asking what came up. If there was some other poor asshole that got first crack at being threatened and shaken down tonight, he'd rather not know the details. 

"I hear you're at Berkeley," Mr. Quinto observes. He walks over to take the club chair angled toward Chris's, lifts his glass to his lips and pauses, watchful. "You must be pretty smart."

Chris licks his lips and kind of lifts one shoulder in an aborted shrug. He definitely didn't mention where he goes to school, but by now Quinto and his thugs probably know all kinds of things about him. Stuff about his friends and family, even. It makes his throat go a little dry. He glances at the melting ice in his glass, wondering if he'll choke on the water if he tries to slurp it down.

"So what's a nice boy like you doing racking up all these gambling debts?" Mr. Quinto asks. He slowly crosses one leg over the other, but rather than the pose appearing relaxed, it makes him look coiled, ready to spring. 

"That's really, um. A recent thing?" Chris clears his throat. "I didn't mean for it to happen."

"No one ever does," Quinto says agreeably. "I'd say you'd be wise to stay away from the cards from now on. Don't you agree, Christopher?" He finally takes a sip, keeping his dark eyes on Chris the entire time.

"Great, great advice," Chris rasps out. He grips the arms of the chair before shifting in his seat. He should probably be asking for any kind of leniency he can get, proposing solutions that involve him keeping his kneecaps intact, even trying to flatter this guy to curry a little favor. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with compliments, Chris thinks hysterically, because obviously this Quinto guy is at the top of his game. A person can read it in every assured movement, every tic of his knowing expressions, every precise word that falls from his lips. 

But instead, Chris sits forward on the edge of his seat and blurts out, "You said something about dinner?"

Quinto tips his head down, brow furrowed as he stares. For one terrifying moment Chris thinks, this is it, he's finally managed to piss this guy off enough to sign his own death warrant.

But instead, "Hungry?" Quinto asks softly.

Chris clears his throat, shifts uncomfortably. "I could eat." 

Quinto looks at him intently for another beat. Then he smiles, white teeth gleaming in the room's low light.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Minutes later, Chris and Quinto are seated at an asymmetrical slate grey slab of a dining room table, platters in front of them filled with pristinely arranged sushi and maki, their places set with abstractly patterned square plates. 

It's not at all what Chris might have expected. If he'd spared a thought for what would end up on the table, he'd have pictured stuffed manicotti and garlic bread, maybe veal marsala on a bed of linguini -- classic mobster fare. 

But at least the carefully placed Japanese food solves the mystery of the earlier rustling. Chris keeps his head down and his chopsticks steady, trying not to snort at the image of some of Quinto's tough guys carefully taking unagi maki and yellowfin and seaweed salad out of take-out containers and plating it just so.

Most guys, their lives on the line, probably wouldn't be able to eat. But once Quinto gives him the general wave to go ahead and serve himself, Chris grabs a sampling of everything that's on offer. He's never been a person who forgets food when he's nervous or avoids eating when things are tense. More like when stress rears its head, he'll start looking around, eye out for where the next snack is coming from. 

Besides, if this could well be his last night on earth or his last night with un-fractured bones, he might as well dig in. 

It's not just the food that's off, though -- Quinto isn't what he expected either. Even though Quinto came across cagey and arch back in the living room, at the moment he's not acting particularly intimidating or mysterious. He's just eating neatly and efficiently and apparently feeling no urge to interrupt the silence with conversation. 

At one point Quinto had absently shrugged off his suit jacket, and though his tie remains on, he rolls up his sleeves briskly, revealing a smattering of dark hair on his toned forearms. Chris wonders if maybe it's been a long day for Quinto as well, and this is his first chance to sit down, not have to talk, finally have a bite to eat. It's...sort of relaxed, the two of them hanging out here together having dinner -- that is, if Chris can manage to ignore the looming issue of his enormous debt.

Quinto had actually held out a bottle of sake at one point, but when Chris said no-- he really wants to keep his head on straight tonight -- he just shrugged and poured some for himself. 

"Tempura," Quinto says, shoving at a shallow serving bowl so it's closer to Chris. He forgoes taking any himself, just gets back to his plate of sashimi sans rice or other add-ons. 

"Thanks," Chris mutters, grabbing the edge of the bowl and dishing some up. It's vegetable tempura, gone a little cold, but it's still pretty fucking delicious. He hasn't had Japanese food in a long time, totally tied to the dining halls for this past term because he's been so broke. Anyway, Quinto obviously gets take-out from some upscale places who know what they're doing.

Finally, Quinto shoves his plate back, dropping his napkin on it like he's covering up unseemly evidence. Chris swallows and sets his chopsticks on the wooden rest next to his plate.

"We'll talk in my study," Quinto says, rising and clearly expecting Chris to follow.

The room, when they reach it, looks like it's out of some old Hollywood set, a concept of a Serious Study rendered to scale. There are burgundy leather sofas, an unlit fireplace with a huge imposing mantle, and built-in mahogany shelves filled with thick leather-bound books. He can't glimpse any titles, but Chris would bet dollars to doughnuts that someone else lined those shelves with those volumes, shoved them into place by color and size instead of author and subject. 

Though Quinto seems in his element when he saunters across the room, he glances at Chris's expression to see how he's reacting. The whole place is probably designed as an intimidation tactic. It's tempting to tell Quinto he doesn't need to worry, that he's already intimidating enough. But Chris already had a stern talking-to with himself during the plane's descent to keep his trap shut as much as possible. 

Quinto takes a seat on one of the leather couches and stretches his arm across the back of it. He doesn't tell Chris to sit down.

After a second, Chris chooses one of the upholstered wing chairs. It's nearly identical to the dark brown ones in his department's grad lounge, except not scuffed or with bits of stuffing poking through of the bottom. He's not sure if he should fold his hands or cross his legs or what, so he just perches on the edge and waits. 

"You like Berkeley?" Quinto asks abruptly.

Chris nods and slides his hands up and down his thighs to dry his damp palms on his jeans. "Yeah, it's good. Hard work but uh. Yeah. I do okay there."

They stare at each other for a moment. Chris can feel his cheeks begin to heat; he's not sure what the fuck he's supposed to be doing or saying. Now that his starving thing's been resolved, he can feel the crush of the debt he owes on his shoulders again. It doesn't help any that Quinto's watching and apparently enjoying his discomfort. In fact, the more Chris's face flushes, the more Quinto's lips curl up in the hint of a smile. 

It makes sense that he'd find Chris's unease hilarious. After all, what kind of guy runs a successful mob joint? Probably a guy who thinks it's all kinds of fun when other people are shaking in their socks. Not that Chris is wearing socks (what with the kidnapping and the anxiety over living to see another day, he's kind of gotten behind on his laundry). 

And not that Chris knows for sure that Quinto's ventures are super successful. But the amazing house and the fine suits and the baller private plane seem like a tip off.

"You know, I do a little work in the Bay area," Quinto says, off-handed. "Actually, we've been looking to expand some of our influence up north."

Chris coughs; he can feel his blush spreading out again, and he's still not sure where to put his hands. "Well, good luck with that," he says finally with a vague gesture and then grimaces because what the hell, he does not need to wish a bad guy doing illegal shit _good luck_.

"Thank you," Quinto says. If he looked a little amused before, he looks increasingly entertained now. Maybe that's the whole purpose of tonight: he's just going to let Chris stammer and act like a dork for a while before he finally pulls out his big gun and takes him out. It's like Chris is his jester-for-hire, and Quinto the fucking frightening king holding court.

"Listen, what do you want?" Chris asks.

Quinto cocks his head to the side, like it's only now occurring to him that they're here for a specific reason. "What do I want?" he echoes. His eyes drift down Chris and back up again, as though he's going to find the answer somewhere on Chris's body. 

Chris automatically looks down at his shirt, because maybe he's got some wasabi or roe on there. But nope, he's okay. He might die tonight, sure, but at least he hasn't embarrassed himself with spilled food stains. 

"Well, Christopher," Quinto continues easily, "usually at this stage I'd say I want my money." 

"How does that work, anyway?" Chris asks even though his heart is thumping hard and his fingertips are going tingly. "I thought I owed that money to Mr. Mangianelli." 

Quinto regards him coolly for a moment. "Mr. Mangianelli and I are renegotiating some terms and boundaries." 

Which doesn't exactly answer the question, except maybe it kind of does. It doesn't matter -- he probably shouldn't focus on one dumb aspect of this mess when his life could seriously be on the line. But Chris can't stop trying to get a handhold on anything to slow down whatever fucked up outcome awaits him as soon as the conversation stops. "Yeah, but like, did you just call him up, or --"

"The details are unimportant," Quinto tells him. For the first time there's a hint of irritation in his voice. 

Chris shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click audibly.

Quinto glances down and carefully adjusts his pricey watch; meanwhile, Chris's eyes helplessly train on those bared muscular forearms. The guy looks like he works out, that's for sure. A man probably has to bench press a ton if he menaces people as a career. At dinner briefly Chris had spared a small thought of thanks that none of the other goons are around; it seemed safer for him if there wasn't a violent dogpile imminently threatening. But looking at Quinto's wiry strength, seeing the sinews of his body under his fitted shirt and hearing his sleek expensive trousers softly shushing as he shifts, Chris can feel his heart start to beat fast again.

By the time Mr. Quinto looks up again, his expression shifts back to unperturbed amusement. "Let's get back to our mutual problem. We've already established you're in no position to hand over what you owe me, Christopher. So what else do you think you could give me instead?"

"I --" Chris stalls. His mind chugs ahead like a train of stupidity, throwing out random useless ideas. It's way, way too late to try John's fake-out trick, with a briefcase of bricks pretending to be wads of cash. And Mr. Quinto isn't going to find the prospect of Chris's stack of U.S. Savings Bonds that he got from his grandparents intriguing, especially since they won't reach their full value for like five more years (plus they're in his family's safe deposit box at home, and Chris doesn't even have a key). Also, even if Chris's dad is probably going to give Chris his car in a year when he gets a new one, offering a mafia dude a seven-year old Acura eleven months down the road probably doesn't sound like such a sweet deal. 

He's got absolutely nothing to offer right now, and both of them know it.

"Look, man, if you're going to kill me, just get it over with," Chris says at last.

Quinto's eyebrows rise ever so slightly, like Chris has just suggested something really gauche in front of the whole country club. "Oh, I'd hate to have it come to that." He rubs his thumb over the buttery-looking dark leather and regards Chris expectantly. 

"What, then?" Chris finally bursts out. "I don't have the cash, I definitely don't have any other expensive stuff to give you -- what else do you want from me?" 

Quinto shakes his head a little, but he's starting to smile. It's no longer just a hint of a smirk, but white teeth flashing. It's a terrible time for Chris to start hearing the lyrics to "Mack the Knife" in his head, but Chris's brain often likes to up the ante when everything is already going to hell. The words play in a loop in his skull, in a booming belting Broadway rendition: _Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear/And he shows them pearly white..._

"Come on now, Christopher," Quinto murmurs. We've already established that you're smart -- good school, good grades. I'm sure if you put your mind to it, you can think of some other assets you can offer me."

Chris makes a tremulous inquiring sound; he wants to come up with the right answer, but he's never felt more lost. 

At the soft noise, Mr. Quinto leans forward avidly, sharp glint in his dark eyes, keen expression on his strong-featured face.

Just for a second Chris worries he might pass out. The room goes soft grey at the edges of his vision, but no. There's no way. It's got to be the pressure of the situation getting to him. Did he honestly just think Mr. Quinto implied that he -- that he was suggesting Chris actually -- 

Chris grabs the chair's arms to steady himself and forces a laugh.

But Mr. Quinto doesn't laugh along. He just stares and waits, unruffled, ready, and deadly serious.

"You're not," Chris tries. He coughs a couple of times while his eyes dart around frantically, to the doorway, to the hallway beyond. The door is three strides away, the street beyond the long twisting driveway is maybe a thirty-second sprint. But even as he's trying to calculate the distances, he knows it's futile, fucking knows he can't just make a run for it.

So he clasps his hands together to keep them from shaking and tries to find the thread of the conversation. "Okay, help me out here, because I don't want to, uh, offend you. But are you seriously saying if I sleep with you, um...that's actually what you're saying, right?"

Quinto says nothing, but his eyes scan over Chris again, slower this go around.

Chris nearly smacks himself in the head, because sure, he'd been a little distracted with the trying to stay alive part, but it's hella obvious _now_ that's been the vibe the whole time. Is he just that goddamn naïve or is he actually the biggest idiot in the entire Golden State?

It's a few minutes before he can be sure words will come out of his mouth instead of garbled choking sounds. But as soon as he's wrenched his vocabulary into action he asks, "So, like, I sleep with you once, and we're even?" 

"Once?" Mr. Quinto makes a tsk-ing sound, touches his splayed-out fingertips to his chest as if in surprise. "With the sum you owe, Chris, and the interest growing every moment? Do you really think one time would take care of all of this?"

"I'm not gay," Chris says hollowly.

Quinto shrugs. "That's not a concern."

"It is to me," Chris insists.

Mr. Quinto shoots him an enigmatic look. "Trust me, everything we would do? You would want it."

"How do you figure?" Chris fires back before he can stop himself. "You're basically pushing me to do this, or --" 

"What I'm doing is offering a possibility," Quinto insists, and he pronounces each word with care, obviously to ensure that Chris will get the gist. "You should appreciate I'm being very understanding in your case, Mr. Pine, proposing various options."

For all that Chris had been desperate to lose the _Threepenny Opera_ soundtrack ringing in his head a few minutes ago, it's jarring when the words echoing in his mind become Nino's exasperated words back in the desert, the first time Chris had met Mr. Quinto.

_Mr. Quinto is being....very generous. I recommend you don't try his patience._

"Oh my god," Chris says softly, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his right hand and then just pressing hard. "Okay. Okay, okay. I guess I don't really have a choice." He drops his hand, sits up straight. "So how exactly -- I mean, I'm not just giving you _carte blanche_ here; we're going to set some fucking terms and limits --"

" _Carte blanche_ ," Mr. Quinto repeats, and for some reason he looks utterly pleased that those words have just fallen from Chris's mouth. "Now I see the Berkeley in you." Then he makes a moue of disappointment. "Though really, you undercut your intelligence with some of your language choices and speech patterns. Have you thought about that?"

"Yeah, okay, the point being," Chris interrupts impatiently, "you said one time wasn't enough to wipe out what I owe. But how many times are we talking here? Before the debt is totally paid up?" Because no matter that there's a dull roar of pressure sounding in his ears, now that he's in, he's all in. He can fucking do this if he's got to, but he's not flying blind this time, not like with all that bullshit with Mangianelli and the "interest" and Vegas. 

"Ah, you want to get to specifics already?" Quinto sighs like he's disappointed. "Really, the overriding concern for me is a broader question." 

"What broader question?" Chris makes himself ask, only just calling back the _you asshole_ he so wants to tag on the end of it. 

Mr. Quinto lifts his gaze to examine the intricate dark wood moldings at the jointure of the wall and the ceiling. "The question of whether I should actually accept this form of compensation."

"Wait, what?" Chris explodes. 

Quinto's brown eyes snap back to him. "I never said this was a done deal, covering your obligations this way."

"You were the one who brought it up!" Chris says, and he's close to shouting now, digging his fingers into the stupid wing chair. "It's not like all this sex payment bullshit was my awesome idea!"

"I proposed it as a potential solution, certainly. But at no point did I promise you I was on board." Quinto leans forward, shoving up his rolled-up shirtsleeves as he does, like now he's really getting to work; the shift makes the fabric strain at his biceps. "I'm sure you understand that I would never make an investment without a very good idea of what I'm receiving in return."

Chris stares at him, still stunned. "Oh my god, will you just say whatever it is you actually mean? I've got zero idea what you want now."

"Well, by all means then, let me be forthright." Quinto dips his chin slightly, and there's that hint of a smile again. "I'd like to see a sample of what you have to offer -- right now."

Chris sits back in the chair hard. "What, you want me to just -- here?" He flails as he gestures at the movie set style study. It's like a messed up version of a film, the gay porn take on a mobster movie. He can practically see the idiots who think this would be an awesome idea, hashing it out over In-and-Out burgers, sitting in plastic chairs around a crappy pool while one of them taps the pitch into his iPad. _So picture this -- the guy makes it seem like he'll let the other dude go if he'll let him fuck him. But then, plot twist, he wants to see him beat off first!_

"No," Quinto says. "Follow me."

Before he can take too many steps, though, Chris jumps up, touches him on the shoulder just for a second. As soon as Quinto looks back, Chris snatches his hand away. He doesn't want to send the wrong signal, like he's trying to start something. So he struggles to school his face into neutral setting and breathes in and out slowly. "Okay, but just -- oh my god, I can't believe I'm actually asking this, but can we just be absolutely and totally clear? You want to see me get off before you agree this is how we're going to cancel my debt?"

"We're not going to cancel it," Quinto corrects him; exaggerated patience oozes from every word. "The proposal is about how you're going to discharge your debt. And yes, if after watching you, I agree that this is an attractive offer, then we'll discuss terms."

"Just watching, though," Chris insists. When Quinto tilts his head, waiting, he adds, "You're not going to touch me or anything." 

"Not yet." Quinto's eyes flicker over him before returning to meet his gaze. "Like I said, anything we do, you're going to want it." He turns again and begins to walk out of the room.

"Because jacking off in front of another dude is totally what I want," Chris mutters.

"What was that?" Quinto inquires as he pauses. It's polite, but edged with menace.

"Nothing," Chris quickly replies. "Gotcha." 

Quinto regards him for a few moments, brows knit. For a second Chris can feel his heart in his throat. 

But then Quinto says, "This way," and heads back into the hallway.

Chris's mind stumbles several steps ahead, already picturing the room they must be headed to. He hopes to god it's a bedroom instead of a creepy dungeon with shackles and sex tables or whatever. Who knows what Mr. Quinto is into, after all? He obviously likes wielding power big time. Not that doing all this inside a bedroom is tons better, but it's probably the best of a bunch of bad options.

He has to wait to find out, though, since the guy actually has the gall to stop at the bar back in the first room Chris saw, to refresh his fucking drink. It's on the tip of Chris's tongue to say, "Can we please forget the libations and just get on with this?" But Chris just keeps his hands at his sides, his fingers twitching, and tries not to show this is making him nuts. 

Finally Quinto has parceled out a couple of stupid chilled rocks masquerading as ice cubes and poured his insanely expensive brown liquor from an ornate crystal decanter. He looks up inquiringly to tip the container in Chris's direction. "Bourbon?" he asks, and names a brand Chris has never heard of before in his life. Or maybe it's just the ocean-sounds filling Chris's head with their dull roar makes it hard to understand the actual words.

When Chris shakes his head, Quinto makes a casually disinterested suit-yourself face and wanders onward to another wing of the house, leaving Chris to follow.

The passage takes them past a couple of darkened doors, eventually leading into a huge bedroom. 

Chris's crappy porn screenwriters slam back into his head. _Okay, scene! Interior: huge bedroom, gorgeous windows and skylights. Sunshine floods the space during the daytime. But right now it's night. The shades are pulled, the lighting is low, and on the lush, king-sized bed, there are --_

"Holy shit, are those actual silk sheets?" Chris asks, and immediately follows with, "I've only ever seen those in old 70s pornos." As soon as the words are past his lips, he nearly slaps his hand over his mouth. But instead he grips the hem of his sweater instead, tugging it lower. There's a doubled-over duvet showcasing the sheets of the folded back bedclothes.

Like it was all done in advance, obviously, and he shivers a little. _Everything's arranged, exactly like this has all been thought out in advance,_ the low-rent screenwriters would jot down before they argue over who gets the last fries at the bottom of the greasy paper bag.

"Why don't you find out for yourself?" Quinto suggests. "No," he says sharply when Chris takes an awkward step toward the bed. Maybe that's a good thing, because Chris had mostly been planning to march over, paw at the mattress and say, "Yup, silk," before slowly but inevitably dissolving into a puddle of panic.

"I mean, why don't you get more comfortable first, and then find out?" Quinto proposes next, easy-going once again. He takes a seat in a low slung leather chair in the corner of the room, one that has an excellent view of the bed. He takes a sip of his drink and waits.

"Uh..." Chris stalls, not sure how the hell he's supposed to get comfortable.

"Take your clothes off," Quinto clarifies slowly. "Then you can really feel whether those sheets are silk or not."

Part of Chris wants to run shrieking from the room, because fuck fuck _fuck_ , this is actually happening. Part of him wants to roll his eyes until they fall right out of his skull, because oh, feel whether the sheets are genuine _silk_ \-- it's such a goddamn line. 

Funny how knowing that doesn't make the words any less unnerving, though. 

He rolls his shoulders, forces his muscles to relax a tiny bit. The sooner he starts, the sooner they can -- all that stuff. It's better not to overthink it. Except for how overthinking is his primary mode of operation, of course.

He turns his back on Quinto as he pulls his sweater over his neck, leaving him in his favorite baseball t-shirt, the one with the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers logo. It's kind of a moot gesture, turning away, considering he's about to get naked. But fuck it; it feels incredibly weird stripping like this -- not just in front of another dude, but in front of anyone. The girls he's fucked or messed around with, it had all been very much the clothes coming off in the process, mostly in the dark. He's never been in this set-up, with the other person watching and waiting and fully-clothed across the room, expecting him to take it all off.

He can hear the clink of those rocks, a glass being raised. 

He drapes his sweater carefully on an empty bedside table. Chris's crappy formica topped table back in his dorm room is always piled high with books. This one looks like it's never had so much as a speck of dust cluttering it. 

Chris stares down dumbly at his Chucks. At least he hadn't given in to the polite impulse to take off his shoes when he'd been ushered into the house; he hadn't wanted to pad around Quinto's place in his bare feet. Now it gives him another item to discard before the inevitable full-on nakedness. He half-scrunches and bends over to untie his sneakers.

"Not that I mind the view," Quinto says, his voice suave and smoky, "but let's have you facing me for this part."

"Yeah, okay," Chris mutters. He kicks off his unlaced shoes and steps in a half-circle to turn back toward his voyeur, all the while keeping his eyes on the polished gleam of the wood floor. 

He glances up as he straightens, his hand automatically reaching behind his neck to tug the t-shirt over his head. Sure enough, Quinto's dark eyes are trained on him, and he's holding his glass of bourbon, one finger sliding back and forth along the side. 

Chris counts to three in his head and pulls the t-shirt off quickly. He can feel his hair puff up with static and he swats at it irritably.

"Okay, so," he says to himself. He moves his shaking hands to his waist, starts to loosen his belt.

"You're blushing, Christopher," Quinto says in a low voice. 

"I...guess?" Of course hearing that makes his skin flush more; it always happens when someone points it out. Chris frowns and crosses his arms over his bare chest. "Look, can you just call me Chris? It'll make it a little less weird." Maybe that will also stop the nape of his neck from prickling with a frisson of anticipation whenever Quinto lingers over the syllables of his full name.

"It just fans out, doesn't it, right across your chest," Quinto says, hushed. Great, this is a nature show, and Chris is the unaware gazelle nosing around at the watering hole. Only if the nature show were narrated by the lion, Chris thinks to himself a little hysterically and actually has to bite his lip so he won't bark out a dopey laugh. 

Quinto catches his eye. Whatever he sees in Chris's expression amuses him again. It's annoying as hell to see him looking so pleased, but hey, it's marginally better than that predator stare. 

"All right. Chris. And since we're getting on familiar terms, why don't you call me Zach?"

"Fine," Chris mutters. He should not fucking care what he calls this guy. He should care that he's pulling his belt through the loops of his jeans, and it's going way faster than he means it to. Still, his mind seizes on the name -- jumping right to the nickname already, and aren't they getting friendly? He remembers Quinto -- Zach -- at the dining room table in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, that end-of-the-day feel. Do his goons call him Zach? Do his friends? Does he have friends who aren't his goons?

"I'd like to hear you say it," Zach tells him. His voice sounds calm. It's an order all the same.

"Fine, _Zach_." Chris clears his throat, takes a deep breath. "So should I keep going, _Zach_?" 

"Did I tell you to stop?" Zach asks.

Chris quickly thumbs open the button-fly on his jeans. It's like a band-aid or something; he should just rip it off now and worry about how it'll feel later. So he does a shimmy and kicks the denim off. 

How it feels is -- well, it feels exposed, being down to his boxers, which isn't a shocker. He'd rub his arms a little for show, to drive home how much he doesn't want to stand here shivering in his underwear, but the temperature's actually okay. 

Randomly, it dawns on him that the bed covers aren't the only part of the room prepared in advance. Zach probably had the heat turned up. Nice of him, Chris thinks, and fuck if his inner voice doesn't hit an appreciative note instead of striking on the sarcasm scale. 

He's so busy scolding himself for the flash of incongruous and idiotic grateful reaction that it takes him a sec to realize that Zach has raised an eyebrow at his boxers.

"I didn't know anyone else would be seeing me like this," Chris says in a cranky voice, gesturing to the underwear. They're the gag pair Katie had gotten him last Christmas, decorated like they're made of patches of crinkled holiday wrapping paper.

"Actually, I think they're very appropriate," Zach says. He smirks as he meets Chris's eyes. 

"Just -- shh," Chris says irritably without thinking about it. But Zach doesn't react, doesn't even tell Chris to get the hell on with it. He just waits and watches.

So Chris finally takes one last deep breath and yanks off the boxers. He hastily flicks them off his foot to the side; the last thing he wants to do is trip over them and land on his face.

It's hard not to strike a quick conceal pose, like one where he covers his junk with his hands. Curling his fingers into fists helps a little; so does the bite of his blunt nails digging into his skin. "So where do you want me?" he mumbles. 

"I want you on my bed," Zach tells him, and he's full out grinning now.

"Jesus Christ," Chris says under his breath. But he moves to the mattress as instructed and sits gingerly on it. And yes, the dark green sheets really are silky smooth on his bare ass. 

"Go ahead, stretch out and relax," Zach advises him. He's following his own advice already, loosening his tie and undoing his two top buttons with practiced flicks. All the while he never takes his eyes off Chris. 

"Oh, super relaxed, sure," Chris says as he once again shifts awkwardly. He scoots back a little with his legs stretched out stiffly in front of him, back against the thickly padded headboard. It's a dark brown leather number with burnished metal studs, probably running thousands upon thousands of dollars over at Mobster Outfitters. 

When he glances up, Zach is still staring at him. Chris wraps his arms around his torso, and then immediately flings his arms to his sides so he doesn't look weird. 

"Start anytime you're ready," Zach says, like he's being magnanimous -- _oh sure, spank it in front of me, but at your own pace_. 

"Yeah, okay." Chris closes his eyes for a second. "Okay," he repeats in a whisper, and slides his right hand down his thigh.

At first he just flexes his fingers and tries to relax. He cycles through images and sounds and moments in his head -- the girl he'd fooled around with at the last party he'd gone to, who had laughed and shimmied when she came with his fingers inside her. The woman wearing heels and pearls and nothing else in a series of pictures from the last porn site he'd been on. The girl who sits in front of him in his Econ lecture, who absently twists her dark brown hair up into a knot before she slides a pencil through it slowly. They're all grabbed at random, but it's enough to get him going, that familiar spark of interest spreading warmth along his skin. 

He goes ahead and slides his hand down further to cup his balls, just feeling the weight and the warmth of them, and takes another deep breath. With a slow exhale out, he spreads his legs a little, lets his head tip back to rest against the headboard.

"Yeah, that's nice," a deep voice says suddenly.

Chris bites his lip and meets Zach's eyes. It should make him freeze up, right? Hearing Zach talk to him? It should be a total boner killer, being reminded he's not alone in this room, ruining any wisp of a pretense that he's doing this because he wants to. 

And yet --

"Let me see you," Zach says, his voice a rough growl. "Show me what you like." 

A rush of sensation starts at the base of Chris's spine and flares outward. He blinks in surprise, but his hand has already gotten with the program, grabbing his stiffening cock, starting a slow stroke down. He presses briefly at the base of his groin before he slides his fist back up.

"That's it," Zach says softly as Chris twists over the top and pulls down again.

As proof that Chris's brain is so not screwed on right, he looks over at Zach again. Zach has set his drink down, his legs have spread further in his chair, and he's dragging his thumb slowly across his bottom lip. 

"You look good like that. Keep going," Zach says. His eyes are so dark.

Zach never said Chris couldn't close his eyes, so he does, if only to try to keep his mind from spiraling out of kilter. He's so hard now, and for a moment he forgets to flip through the images of women in his mind. 

But that lack of scrolling pictures makes him falter; he's going to need to think of something to get him through this, right? So he takes a deep breath, slips his fingers just behind his balls to stroke lightly and tries to start the reel again.

It's got to be the weird setting, the fact of someone watching him, the broader scope of surrealistic fucked-uped-ness infusing everything. But when Chris casts about for images to help him out, it's not the stuff he usually calls up flitting through his head. No, this time when his hips roll up, it's to the flash of a memory he's tried to shove aside for forever -- high school lunch period, goofing off outside with his best friend Nate. Nate had wriggled around with his head in Chris's lap, while Chris laughed and tried to twist away so Nate couldn't tell he had a hard on. 

His cock fucking jumps in his hand. 

His breathing speeds up as he thinks about Nate's warm hazel eyes. He tugs himself harder when he remembers the way his AP English teacher Mr. Bell used to smile slowly, secretively, whenever he thought Chris said something particularly clever in class. And his hand flutters up to rub across his chest when a recent random late-night conversation threads through his thoughts: Ian, an art history grad student with thick stylish frames and a plummy kind of English accent, serving Chris his first taste of scotch as he talked about the history of masculinity and male beauty.

None of this stuff is on his fucking approved list. But he's too far gone to call it back or panic now; he's panting and scraping his fingertips over his nipples and widening his legs as he keeps up a quick rhythm. 

It's still a shock, though, when those wrecked floodgates let loose an image Chris never thought would zip back into his brain at a time like this -- goddamn it, but he can't stop picturing Zach himself, back in the desert, the way he'd looked at Chris from his seat in the limo, stirring his drink slowly with his finger. 

Chris's eyes fly open on his gasp. 

Zach's moving his hand oh-so-slowly over the front of his tailored trousers; his eyes trained on Chris, unyielding. It's too dim for Chris to see clearly, but Zach's obviously hard from watching and keeping up a teasing caress on his cock through the expensive material. At least he hasn't taken his dick out -- and then Chris licks his lips and his idiot brain thinks, _hey, what would it be like if Zach slid down his zipper, reached in, and --_

When his hips stutter helplessly, thrusting, Chris slides his feet up to brace himself as much as he can on the slippery sheets. To stay anchored he reaches behind his head blindly, groping around before grabbing on to the headboard. The ballast lets him fuck forward into his fist way more easily, and he grunts as his rhythm picks up. 

He's so lost, so utterly absorbed that at first he doesn't realize Zach's gotten out of his chair.

"You said -- you weren't going to --" Chris pants, because that was the deal, right? Zach wasn't going to touch him. He doesn't let go of himself, just keeps stroking.

"Relax, I'm not going to lay a finger on you," Zach says. His voice sounds hoarse, but when he walks across the thick carpeting it's a confident prowl. If Chris actually had the presence of mind to try and run at this stage, he has no doubt Zach would give long-limbed chase.

Zach gets closer, closer still, until he's got one hand planted next to Chris's on the top of the headboard. He leans down, dark eyes fathomless, and his lips parted as his tongue flickers out to wet them. His carefully coiffed hair has become rumpled somewhere along the way, like he ran his fingers through it when Chris didn't notice, thick strands threatening to spill forward over his strong-featured face. 

"You said," Chris repeats, because it's about all his brain can come up with at the moment. Technically there's no part of Zach actually touching Chris. But he's close, so close, and Chris can feel the huff of Zach's breath against his cheek, against his mouth. 

"I'm not going to break my promise," Zach rumbles. "I won't touch you." He looks down, scanning Chris's flushed body, watching him pulling on his cock, staring as Chris's thighs begin to tremble. Zach makes a sound, wordless and approving, and Chris swears he can feel the vibration.

Zach moves in just a little more, his lips not quite against Chris's ear, and whispers, "See? No contact. I kept my word, didn't I?" When Chris doesn't answer, just glances up at him helplessly, Zach says even lower, "Didn't I, Christopher?"

"Yeah," Chris breathes out, and he's almost there, just --

"That's right," Zach breathes. "I'm not touching you at all. So we'll both have to imagine it's my hand on you, about to bring you off."

Chris chokes out a desperate sound, and then he's coming, spunk running over his fingers, some of the jizz hitting his chest, and some of it, holy fuck, catching Zach on the cheek.

"I -- I think--" Chris tries as soon as he can get words past his lips. But his brain is pretty much flatlining and he just wants to sprawl in a heap. 

Zach smiles, cocksure. "You know what I think?" he asks softly. 

Chris shakes his head, looking up into Zach's eyes.

"I think this little arrangement between us is going to work out just fine."


	3. Chapter 3

Chris is back on the plane before he can seriously process any of what just went down with Zach, on the silk sheets, in the bedroom.

Sure, he vaguely remembers being pointed to a shower, and awkwardly re-dressing in the bedroom alone, and a car already materialized out in the drive to take him back to the airport, with Zach looking cool and collected by the doorway. At least the strange bustle of it saves the weirdness of asking if this is going to turn into a sleepover.

Before he'd headed out to the airport, though, Zach had gone over The Plan.

* * *

Chris had seriously tried to pay attention and keep it all straight. But after all the anxiety and adrenaline and one of the most fucked up and intense orgasms he'd ever experienced, the best he had managed was for his muddled thoughts to film over with slow-burning indignation that they're going to talk about this right now, seriously?

Something about the setup had tapped hardcore into Chris's resentful memories of high school years: his mom springing lectures and admonishments on him first thing in the morning on school days, when he had been so exhausted he could barely blink, never mind debate his curfew or his calculus grade. 

"Hey," he'd managed to get out in a protesting voice at one point while Zach rattled off terms. But Zach had just pressed ahead with his agenda, ignoring Chris's half-hearted objections like a really sharp-dressed and articulate steamroller.

Even through the haze of his confusion and pique, though, somehow the major points had gotten through.

  * Their arrangement will last eight months.
  * Chris will agree to be available to Zach two to three times a week depending on Zach's schedule.
  * The days of availability will be decided in advance to accommodate Chris's classes and coursework.



"Eight months?" Chris had asked, pausing at the front door. 

Mister Bartender Man was waiting by the car outside, eyes scanning the road barely visible at the end of the drive. And Silent Associate, Nino, was there too, watching Chris and Zach blandly. It seemed uncool they had to hash this out in front of the gang minions, but Zach was moving forward smoothly and steadily toward the car, like progress was inexorable, and Chris had to jog along to keep up. 

But even as his feet followed Zach, his mind hadn't been able to move past the whole eight months thing. How was that fair? Wait, _was_ it fair? Chris had no idea what the standard sex contract was supposed to look like. He could maybe text John's Cousin Henry to ask him, since he was up on lawyer-ly things. But he might not have studied gay-for-gambling-debts cases in his law school classes in Korea.

Still. Eight months. It wasn't so bad, considering Chris had been genuinely afraid he wouldn't ever see the sun rise again only hours ago. It was a limit, albeit one farther in the future than he's really used to thinking about, you know, ever. He had had to count out the months in his head, naming them. The Plan will take him into June, a month and change after his final exams. 

"That's -- my semester is over then, and I need to work in the summer, probably," he had added hastily just as he was gestured to get into car, because that was obviously something that had to go into the calculations.

"Don't worry about it," Zach had said. "We'll work it all out later."

Probably they should have worked it out right then. But Chris had been so tired and flummoxed that he was stumbling on his feet. Plus it wasn't like Chris had any counter-proposals -- aside from Zach leaving him the hell alone and completely forgiving the debt just because that would have been really human of him. 

"You have the ticket to get him through security, Sal?" Zach had asked Mister Bartender Man. 

"Right here, Mr. Quinto," Sal had said officiously. He'd given Chris a brief nod of acknowledgement as soon as they reached the driveway. It wasn't exactly warm for a guy who had stood in the same room with Chris for three hours pouring him Mexican Cokes from little glass bottles. But at least it was better than Sal leering at Chris like he's Zach's new floozy (which was decent of him, Chris had thought with a grimace, because Chris obviously more or less was).

Sal had handed the printed-out ticket over to Chris -- another one-way, back to San Francisco.

"Oakland's better, for getting to Berkeley," Chris had said absently as soon as he saw the printout.

"I'll keep that in mind," Zach had told him. "For next time." 

Before Chris could have a tiny panic attack over "next time" part, Zach had drawn out three crisp hundred-dollar bills. "For a cab." 

Chris had glanced over at Sal and Nino, but the two men had stared straight ahead like this conversation wasn't even happening in front of them.

"Is this, like, going on my tab or something?" Chris hadn't been able to resist asking. He had taken the bills in his shaking hand, nervously crumpling them. "Flying back and forth, cabs, and all that bullshit?"

Zach had shaken his head. "Consider it an entirely voluntary outlay of expenses on my part to receive maximum return on this investment."

"You could just say, no, I won't be adding this on to your debt of doom," Chris had muttered. Jesus fuck, _investment_.

"I'll be in touch," Zach had said carelessly, but his dark eyes were proprietary, calculating.

* * *

The trip to the airport is an awkward blur of Chris keeping his eyes steady on the passing scenery so he won't have to stare at Sal and Nino sitting on the bench seat across from him. 

At least, when they do arrive at L.A.X. Sal and Nino finally let him go ahead alone at airport security. Somehow, Chris bets the lack of tickets wouldn't hinder these guys from getting to where they want to go.

As he trudges past the metal-gated shops, it strikes him it's the first time he's been alone in what feels like days. He lets out a shaky sigh as he heads onward.

Nearly everything is closed. Apart from him all the travelers look like they're on business trips, sporting navy suits and brown shoes, tugging the same kind of rolling suitcases. Their get-ups look dull and cheap compared to Zach's. 

Again, Chris is the only passenger on the same fancy small plane. "Welcome back, Mr. Pine," the same steward murmurs deferentially, and Chris tries to smile but grimaces instead as he's relieved of his backpack and shown to a plush leather seat. Has this dude been hanging out at the airport just waiting to squire Chris back to NoCal? Is everyone who works for Zach on call twenty-four seven for his private needs?

After Chris lands at San Francisco in the early morning hours, he takes a look at the line of cabs waiting by the curb and plods onward to take the BART instead. It's not like he's got a ton of spending money these days, after all. Three hundred dollars will buy shots of espresso and gel ink pens and late night burritos. And maybe, just maybe, if Zach keeps handing him more bills and Chris stashes some away, the cash will eventually help him land a spot in a lucky card game.

* * *

That first week of The Plan, Chris buys a generic calendar with stock photos of bland woodsy landscapes and marks it out eight months to the day from the night at Zach's place. He puts it up with tacky putty amid his band posters and that one framed still life print his mom had gotten him from the Getty to class up his dorm room. 

"Hey, is that like a work schedule or something?" John asks when he stops by Chris's room on Thursday so they can head over to a dive bar together. He'd swung by earlier on Wednesday, way too early in the morning, banging on the door and waking Chris up from a fitful sleep. But the exuberant "I'm so stoked you're not dead, man!" and the bear hug that followed mostly made up for it. Chris had shoved him out the door soon after, pleading the excuse of a seminar he ended up skipping and promising to talk more the next night. 

Now John's got his finger pressed against a circled day. It matches one of the dates from the sequence Zach had texted to Chris with the simple but nonetheless disconcerting message _be available_. 

Chris clears his throat and restrains the anxious impulse to brush John's hand away, to ask him not to touch. "Well --"

"Oh, dude, is that when you have to work for Mister Mob Boss?" John asks, his eyes going wide. He jabs at the date.

"Can you shut the hell up?" Chris hisses, as he hurries over to slam his door. There's no one out in the hall, but it's not like he wants to broadcast this. "And...yeah. Kind of."

"He went for the work-study idea?" 

"I'm going to be...doing some stuff for him," Chris says uncomfortably. He's been debating whether to straight up tell John until this moment; after all, John knows about the debt and the weirdness back in the desert. But when it comes down to it, Chris just can't tell one of his best friends that he's sort of agreed to become some kind of a rent boy. 

"It's fine; it's only stuff I want to do," he adds, because John's forehead quickly furrows. 

It's only after the words are out that he realizes he's parroting a version of Zach's darkly suggestive promise: _anything we do, you're going to want it_. He turns briefly, partly to grab his key card and wallet but mostly to hide the sudden flush on his cheeks. 

When glances back, John is nodding to himself a few times, a hint of a frown still on his face as he gazes at the calendar. "Nothing totally illegal, though, right? Just because it would suck if you got in trouble."

Chris makes an odd sound. "Nah," he forces out finally. 

"Cool," John says. It's clear he trusts Chris to tell him the truth, because when he turns back his face relaxes into his familiar easy smile. "Now come on. First round's on me, to celebrate everything working out."

"Yay," Chris says half-heartedly as he follows John out the door.

* * *

After a few weeks, Chris works out what "be available" means.

It means, some days, getting picked up on the outskirts of campus, riding in the back of rented sedans (one of Zach's minions typically lurking poker-faced in the corner) to restaurants in San Francisco or Oakland or San Jose that Chris couldn't go to otherwise without a substantial trust fund. Usually Zach shows up later, as much as an hour or two, to join Chris where he sits stiffly at a table for two making stilted conversation with the wait staff. 

Mostly they meet at off hours -- the lunch crowd long gone or late at night when the wait staff hangs around at the back folding napkins and gossiping. Sometimes the chef comes out of the kitchen, restaurant-monogrammed coat casually half-unbuttoned, asking if there's "anything else we can do for you, Mr. Quinto, anything at all?"

It means, if the hour is late, Zach already in the back of the limo picking Chris up and driving through a nearby city to head to a private club with a conspicuous lack of a sign marking its entrance. Most times they're ushered over to a darkened banquette booth while the concierge immediately hurries Zach's brand of bourbon to their corner. The men who frequent the late night places wear slick suits and congregate in gangs of associates, or escort dolled-up young women on their arms. Most of those ladies have brash laughs and sparkly short dresses. They teeter past on killer high heels sometimes, eyes darting to and away from Chris if they happen to spot him. 

Maybe it's an enlightened tolerance that no one bats an eye at Chris's torn jeans or his stretched-out t-shirts when they go to those joints (and jeez, maybe he'd wear something a little nicer if he ever had a clue as to where they were headed, but Zach likes to spring things on him). Maybe it's broadmindedness that no one ever once looks askance that Zach's got a guy at his side instead of a girl (though Chris keeps checking to see if anyone's eyeing them because of it). Or maybe it's because the other denizens of those places, when they're not glad-handing other men and murmuring about "opportunities" and asking after everyone's mothers, openly regard Zach with a mingling of obvious reverence and a hint of terror. 

Unsurprisingly, after the arrangements for their first dinner, "be available" sometimes means another trip in the private plane, getting flown out to L.A. or Las Vegas or to some municipal airport in small California town Chris has never been to in his life. Those times they head wherever "Mr. Quinto is conducting business," as Sal answers with a wink and a grin when Chris asks why the hell they're wherever the fuck they are. 

It means Chris over time memorizes the layout of the L.A. house, and constantly mixes up a series of startlingly similar chi-chi Las Vegas hotel suites, and tries not to notice details at the random apartments they end up in when they meet in the sticks. Maybe those places belong to one of Zach's "associates" or they're momentarily "borrowed" in what Chris guesses is a mafia version of eminent domain. 

Everywhere they go, Chris opens doors warily; he doesn't want to see anything he's not supposed to.

And it means, after dinner or after drinks or after Zach's asked a few surprisingly insightful questions about Chris's classes and complained in vague terms about some of the "hassles" he's had to deal with lately, Zach spreading his arm out across the seat of the limo or the back of a couch or the top of the curved banquette and waiting...

* * *

The very first of these times, in another of the ubiquitous sleek black sedans in Oakland (clearly not Zach's, because on the first leg of the drive Zach frowned at the contents of the mini bar and distress flitted across Sal's animated face before he'd smoothed his expression over into blank watchfulness again), Zach rests his arm atop the plush leather bench and gives Chris a look that clearly signals "come here." 

Right before that, they'd stopped so Sal could switch into the front with the driver. Chris had been messing with his phone until Zach had snatched it out of his hands and replied, "You can have it later," to Chris's inarticulate indignant noise. 

When the silence had stretched on, Chris had looked out the window and jittered around nervously, leg bouncing, fingers drumming against the arm rest. 

But as soon as Zach shoots him that look, the demand evident in those brown eyes, Chris freezes. And fuck if he doesn't get the urge to slide over immediately, to obey. It makes him feel a little like a puppy brought to heel.

Chris takes a deep breath and moves over in increments. At first he stops when they're a good foot and a half apart. Zach glances down and tips his head slightly to the right, skepticism clear in the gesture. 

Chris swallows and edges closer. He glances at Zach and quickly looks away again. Zach's watching him intently, or more specifically, watching his lips. 

At first Chris can't parse what the prickly awareness at the back of his neck means, why the start of a shiver steals over his skin. But when he peers back and finds Zach's gaze still fixed on his mouth, he jerks back. He's sure as hell given that look before, but he's never been on the receiving end, the end getting the signal broadcast loud and clear that hey, a blow job? That would be pretty amazing right about now.

He immediately reddens and swallows nervously.

At that, Zach murmurs a pleased sound, reaching out and sliding a thumb over the edges of the blush on Chris's cheeks before cupping his face, his palm against the heat. Of course it only makes Chris's flush burn more.

"You're not just going to -- I can't just -- " Chris stammers, because _hell no, no how, no way_ \-- they are so not jumping right to Zach stuffing his cock down Chris's throat. Even if Chris agrees to any part of what's playing out in Zach's head, and he absolutely has not yet, he's definitely not up for doing some totally new-to-him thing right here. Yeah, there's a privacy screen between the back and the front of the car, but Sal's right up there with the driver. Besides, they're motoring along again, and giving someone head in a moving car just cannot be safe for anybody.

Just when he's preparing his case against embarking on a vehicular blow job adventure, Chris's terrible porn script writers weasel back into his thoughts. He can practically hear one of them crowing over the scenario while the others slurp their watered down iced lattes and nod in sage agreement: _A limo scene, we_ totally _have to do a blow job in a limo scene, right? Classic! So the first guy looks at the second, and you know_ exactly _what he wants, right? The music gets a little more provocative, and then --_

"Relax," Zach murmurs. A beat later, his fingers slide back to thread through Chris's hair, and he pulls Chris close in a fierce kiss.

A stifled noise catches in Chris's throat because...wait, what now? He doesn't know much about how gay dudes do things, but he thought kissing wasn't a thing for them unless it was a relationship. And obviously this isn't a relationship, right? So what is this, some mind fuck bullshit to trip him up?

He half flails, nearly yanks back to smack Zach away, the hysterical move of a screwball comedy heroine slapping the wise-cracking smooth guy who's just stolen a smooch. But despite the bewilderment and indignation, he doesn't push back. In fact, his stupid body just struggles to get closer, and he lets out a little whimpering sound he would swear up and down he has never in his life made before this moment.

Zach rumbles wordless approval, tilting Chris's head to the angle he wants, stroking a warm hand down Chris's side.

No part of Chris knows what the hell is happening -- it's all gone down in a blaze of what-the-fuckery. His heart beats a confused arrhythmic pattern, the pleasurable prickling along his nerves urges him forward, and his mind broadcasts a completely unhelpful series of actual question marks, "? **?**? **?**?" scrolling on a repeating marquee in his head. 

He can't think, can't process, and oh my god, when did he start sucking on Zach's tongue and clutching his blazer? There's a small knowing laugh, a slow but steady slip of Zach's hand underneath Chris's t-shirt, fingertips resting lightly on his bare belly and then sliding downward --

"Mr. Quinto, we're at the restaurant; I'm telling you like you said," Sal's wary voice comes over the intercom.

Chris pants hard, completely taken aback, and looks around wildly. They've stopped -- when did they stop? -- at what looks like the back entrance to a restaurant. There's a concrete loading dock on the left and a waiter leaning against it with his legs crossed, watching the limo with detachment and taking one last drag on his stub of a cigarette.

Zach pauses, his brows knit together.

"You want we should drive around some more?" Sal asks after a pause. 

"No," Zach answers, his thumb pressed against the intercom button. His other hand automatically moves to smooth his hair. "We'll be out in a moment." He shifts back, his eyes on Chris. "Okay?" he asks in a low voice.

"Yup," Chris manages.

By the time Zach emerges from the car (Sal opening the door deferentially), he looks unruffled, totally put together. He steps forward with a confident stride, a guy used to stopping conversations and parting crowds when he enters the room. 

Chris almost trips as he tries to trail after with some modicum of dignity. He can't hope to follow Zach's smooth transition; at best, he can only aim for the role of what-not-to-do dude in a magazine column with a black bar over his eyes, the poor idiot who still needs a few (hundred or so) lessons on composure. 

Zach appears not to notice Chris's stumbling steps, but pauses graciously to usher him along, that barely-there hovering touch again at the small of Chris's back.

* * *

Several dinners and late-night drinks later, enough flights that Chris feels like he should be collecting the points for the miles, and The Plan is not going anything like Chris expected.

For all of Zach's talk about how Chris would want to do stuff with him, Chris and his surges of adrenaline had operated under the assumption that there was going to be some serious "suggestion" making. He'd figured at some point Zach would press his palms on Chris's shoulders insistently, pushing him down to his knees, or would hustle him back into Zach's bedroom at the L.A. house to tell Chris to strip and get ready, whatever the fuck that might entail. 

A time or two Chris had even paused, when he was poking around porn sites on his laptop late at night at his dorm, over the "Gay" button -- not that he wanted to see any of it for himself, obviously, but thinking maybe he should check it out, future reference and mental preparedness and that kind of thing. After all, Zach's going to make demands soon enough. 

But the "be available" dates start to add up, and none of that happens. Yeah, they definitely make out -- Zach pushes him back against darkly painted soundproofed walls in clubs or on velvet Las Vegas hotel room couches, or one time, on the floor of an apartment in Palo Alto stripped bare of furniture, his mouth demanding, his hands roaming. Zach bites along his jawline and massages Chris's thighs and presses his warm hands against the small of Chris's back and breezes his fingertips over Chris's chest, his thumbs every so often catching over Chris's nipples whether by mistake or by design. 

But every time Chris thinks it's going to go further, it stops. Zach's underlings interrupt, or they arrive at whatever place they're headed, or Zach mutters something about needing to call it a night because he's got "an early start" the next day. Chris absolutely avoids any subject that veers toward Zach's work, so any intimation that Zach needs to get to it isn't anything he's going to question. 

A couple of weeks go by. Chris is pretty sure this is the longest time he's kissed the same person multiple times without it going any further than hands on mainly teen-rated areas of mostly clothed skin. 

Finally, a few weeks into The Plan and after another expensive dinner, in L.A. this time -- at the chef's table of an amazing place, the meal featuring a procession of deferential wait staff proffering small plates of exquisite offerings made just for Zach (and Chris, sure, but only because he happens to be there too) -- they end up back at Zach's place sitting together on one of those burgundy leather sofas in Zach's "study."

Chris glances around nervously and wonders if this is going to be the time Zach steers him to the bedroom. It's got to happen sooner or later, and he's making himself agitated wondering, goddamn it, when? Honestly, it's not like he wants to bring it up, to hasten the inevitable. But Chris has always done way better with everything -- school, friends, life -- when he knows what's coming. And all of this fooling around but not really with more to come oh so obviously lurking on the horizon gets his nerves buzzing with trepidation. 

So he takes a breath and parts his lips to finally get it all out in the open...before he stops and realizes he's not sure how to introduce the topic. He's tempted to ask outright, "Listen, are we fucking tonight?" or "Are you ever going to tell me to suck your cock or what?" 

Before he can falter over any awkward questions, though, Zach's eyes darken, dropping to Chris's mouth. He yanks Chris close, not quite into his lap but almost, and kisses his mouth like Chris is the very best offering on the delectable looking tray of desserts they'd turned down (or at least, Zach had waved the tray away while Chris had looked on sadly as the chocolate pots de crème and brightly colored scoops of gelato and a precarious looking pyramid comprised of spongey chocolate cake garnished with slabs of nut brittles were all carried off).

And kissing Zach is now familiar enough; Chris has come to expect it. He's even stopped berating himself on the trips home for clutching Zach back and making embarrassing sounds into Zach's mouth, the sorts of noises that make Zach's lips curve against his in a knowing smile. It's not like Chris has a choice, exactly, so is it such a big deal if he lets himself enjoy it a little? 

Chris definitely can't make the objection that extended kissing sessions go against Zach's claim that Chris will want everything they do. Zach's just a fantastic kisser, full stop. Chris had spent exactly one sleepless night stressing out over the fact that he keeps thinking that, but come morning he'd told himself to get over it. After all, it doesn't say anything about Chris and what he prefers, right? Which is definitely girls and their soft skin (and not stubbled cheeks), girls who wear flowery wispy perfume (instead of cologne that smells like someone mixed tobacco and leather and cognac), girls who sidle close with expectant smiles (instead of men who reach out and take what they want). 

Chris pointedly tries not rank Zach among the girls he's kissed; he's got a suspicion that he just might wig out over who turns up in the top slot. Zach mixes it up with panache, knowing when to brush feather-light kisses teasingly, when to turn the press of their mouths together into something absolutely amazing and dizzying, when to make the contact a little sloppy and a lot dirty and leave Chris panting for more. 

And Chris really, really likes kissing, always has, since the first time a girl had chased him during recess in kindergarten and pinned him against the jungle gym for a slack smack of their lips, to the time of his first official kiss when he was fourteen and his best friend's sister came back from college and said he was really growing up before they kissed for three whole minutes behind the pool shed, to the girl he'd dated for ten weeks sophomore year in college who liked to hold Chris's wrists down on the mattress while she wriggled on top of him and bit at his lips with a throaty laugh. 

It's just that even as Chris figures out he's basically okay with Step One of The Plan, he can't stop worrying about what's in store for Step Two (and for all the way up through Step Oh My God).

He's so torn between melting into Zach's kiss and obsessing over the heavy hitting stuff that's to come that he almost misses when Zach goes from stroking up and down Chris's thigh to sliding his hand up to thumb open Chris's button fly.

"Uh," Chris chokes out, hips already jerking forward as soon as Zach reaches into his boxers. His fingertips dig into Zach's shoulders while he looks down at, yup, Zach's strong hand curling around Chris's cock. "Uh. Oh my god. Oh fuck."

His vision begins to blur as he watches that overtly masculine hand pull up and stroke over the head of his dick before sliding back down again. He'll worry about later that there's no edge of hysteria in his mind; at the moment, it's all he can do to stare at the thick knuckles, the light dusting of dark hair on Zach's fingers, the size difference of his large palm, warm and sure and wrapped around Chris's hard on. 

But then his brain reverses the image, like flipping his smart phone's focus to himself, and okay, there's the hysteria as he pictures his own hand reaching and curling around Zach's dick. Oh fuck, now he's actively imagining Zach's dick. Is he bigger? Thicker? Uncut? 

When Chris makes a tiny panicked sound, Zach says, "Sshhh," and keeps at it, steady pressure, possessive strokes, a rhythm that has Chris tilting his pelvis up to chase after more. 

So Chris stops calculating the _quid pro quo_ s surely to come and just pants as he watches the head of his prick pushing up through Zach's fist. 

Zach doesn't let him watch for long, only enough for Chris to start to make garbled sounds. When his voice goes higher register in its desperate noises, Zach lunged forward and pairs jerking Chris off with devouring his mouth again. 

It's an embarrassingly short span of time before Chris gasps and bucks and then comes all over the expensive leather sofa and Zach's hand.

There's a lull of soft kisses, of a monogrammed handkerchief running lightly over Chris's skin, murmurs that don't really translate into actual words, at least not ones that Chris knows, and then --

Then Chris is back on the plane sooner than he could have imagined would be possible.

He's pretty sure Zach hadn't even tried to get Chris to do anything back. At least, nothing that penetrates the fog in Chris's head before the car arrives, and Nino, with his impassive expression, shuts Chris into the back of the limo to take him to L.A.X. He falls asleep in a stupor of lassitude and confusion almost as soon as he gets on the private plane (a charter this time; who knows where Zach's private ride is).

He tries not to think about what happened later that week, when he's walking across campus to meet a buddy for lunch or having a late night in the library surrounded by piles of lit crit volumes or filing away the hundred dollar bills Zach keeps giving him for cabs in the back of his t-shirt drawer.

After all, there's other stuff going on in Chris's life. He's not a full time...whatever he is, for Zach. He's got an econ midterm to study for and two rough drafts to revise, classes to pick for the next semester and neighborhoods to check out if he and John want to get a place off campus for senior year, his mom to placate when she leaves voicemails asking why he doesn't seem to have any free time to visit these days or sends him increasingly insistent emails about Thanksgiving plans. 

So he doesn't really dwell on what happened with Zach, at least until it happens again the next time, in San Jose, in a rented limo. 

They've already had a few rounds at a swanky place, where one of Zach's mobster buddies had paused by their table with a gorgeous woman on his arm. He'd clasped Zach's hand, made a few flippant references to something that sounded incredibly shady, and inquired politely how Chris was doing in school (and then, while his young date gazed in vapid boredom at the dark wood panels on the walls, rambled about how his oldest daughter was doing so great in her final year at Stanford). 

Once they're in the car, Zach quickly strong-arms Chris to pull him close. It's almost a headlock, his elbow at Chris's neck, securing him in a tight clutch. 

Luckily as soon as their lips meet it gets easier for Chris not to worry about how the almost breath-stealing grip makes his cock jump against his button fly. And with Zach murmuring into his mouth, it's easier not to stress about the fact that Zach's already gotten Chris's fly open to give him a few lightly teasing strokes. 

It's harder to pretend to be entirely fuzzy around the edges when Zach pulls back and deliberately holds Chris's gaze before he licks his palm once, twice, and slides it down wet over Chris's dick. Just the sight of that makes Chris twitch again, light-headed from what feels like every last drop of his blood rushing south. 

Soon he's so far gone that when Zach stops to tug briskly at Chris's jeans and boxers, Chris doesn't think to protest, just helps out by shimmying partly out of them. They bunch at his thighs while Zach scrapes his teeth over Chris's neck and works a hand over him faster and faster. 

When Chris starts to come he tips his head back on the leather seat and moans so frantically the memory of the sound makes him flush hot for days after. 

They kiss through Chris's hips jerking up, his cock pulsing, the rivulets running down Zach's fist. Zach rumbles into Chris's mouth, a pleased predatory growl, as the last spasm shudders through Chris. 

Once again, Zach doesn't ask for anything. He doesn't draw Chris's hand into his lap or pointedly look to the plush carpeted floor of the limo. He just stays close, eyes darting over Chris like he's memorizing every last detail of the rise and fall of Chris's chest as he struggles to get his breath back, of how Chris awkwardly twists back into his jeans when he can think semi-straight again, of the way Chris unthinkingly licks his lips. 

Chris takes a bunch of deep breaths as his heartbeat slows, willing himself to stay calm so his chest won't start to pound as the inevitable worry sets in. There's no way Zach's not expecting something after that, and Chris needs to know what. 

Before he can gather any more clues, the car glides into motion. Zach's obviously given some kind of signal when Chris was too zoned out to notice. 

Chris stares out the tinted windows in disbelief as the road starts to pass underneath them. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Zach discard another handkerchief, casually letting it drop to the floor before he carefully smoothes his hair, each strand seemingly already back in place.

Local streets give way to the freeway, and the signs tell Chris they've got nearly an hour's ride back up to Berkeley. It's the first instance when Zach's accompanied him on the way back from anywhere they've met, and Chris has no idea what to make of it. He's used to having the down time after Zach gets him going, riles him up, and then sends him off.

But at least the drive gives Chris plenty of time to broach where they're at with this weirdness if he wants. Surely he can work up the nerve to ask where the hell The Plan is going during the next -- probably forty-five minutes now -- to raise the awkward topic of when exactly Zach's going to insist that Chris ante up.

As they travel north, Chris actually opens his mouth a couple of times to ask something, anything, wildly hoping that he'll figure out the right words when he begins to talk. But apparently parting his lips functions mainly as a cue for Zach to slide back over to him and start making out with him again.

Chris can't tell if Zach specifically wants to shut him up with lots of languid kisses, but hey, it's working. 

In the haze of the afterglow and the obvious deferral of anything else, the kisses start to blur together, and Chris dozes off the last leg of the trip. 

Zach doesn't wake him until they've pulled up not far from his dorm, when Chris's eyelashes flutter open to find that he's fallen asleep with his head on Zach's shoulder.

* * *

Whenever Zach texts Chris more dates to "be available", Chris marks them on the calendar. He's started keeping a list, too, of the incoming numbers. They'll change every so often without rhyme or reason; he only knows from the get-go that they're from Zach because of the code word Zach told him to look out for, a single text of "fiction" with a slight pause afterward before the rest of the info comes. 

Chris guesses Zach doesn't like to hold on to the same number for too long because -- actually, he doesn't want to guess why. There's no reason for Chris to keep track of the discarded ones, but he files them away anyway, like little breadcrumbs that could make a trail later if he wants to follow their path, jotted down in a small moleskin notebook. 

They meet for more fancy dinners, solicitous wait-staff and restaurant owners hovering nearby with faint smiles. Along the way Chris starts to pick up stuff he'd never thought about before in his life, like when he should order rosé to go with his entree and what trendy dishes show up like clockwork on all the menus once certain ingredients come into season or fashion.

His overly complicated dining experiences with Zach are far cry from the carnitas burritos he wolfs down between seminars on campus or the piles of greasy onion rings and plates of nachos he orders with his friends when they grab a bite before they head out to get drunk. He's getting used to switching on and switching off, between his Zach Stuff and the stuff that makes up the rest of his life.

The weird contrast strikes particularly him one day, when he's nodding along to a girl in his senior seminar explaining the overly complicated essay idea she has. He's taking a swig of the huge bottle of iced-tea he picked up before class, suggesting articles he's read that totally work with her topic and offering to loan her his annotated edition of Chaucer, one that she's still waiting on from interlibrary loan. 

But at the same time he's replaying last night, out with Zach at a darkened club -- jazz trio playing quietly in the corner, Zach pouring Chris a finger of the bourbon he's determined to get Chris to appreciate, then skillfully and ruthlessly bringing Chris off under the table while Chris squirms and bites back his gasps.

She pauses, brushing her hair out of her eyes, looks at Chris expectantly. 

Chris quickly changes gears to talk about the stack of readings they've got for their next seminar meeting. He makes the shift so fast, he can't stop to worry about whether his newly acquired skill of switching deftly between the Zach compatible version of Chris and the all-the-other-times kind of Chris might not be such a great thing after all.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

"Is it a girl?" Chris's mom asks sympathetically when she finds him sitting at the kitchen table early Thursday morning during Thanksgiving break. 

"A girl?" Chris echoes numbly. He's been lurking in the dark room alone for who the hell knows how long, staring into space, giving the empty mug in front of him occasional quarter-turns on the woodblock surface just to break the silence with something other than the sound of his own breathing. Now he blinks rapidly as his mom flicks on the lights, and rubs his palms over his eyes. 

Just over a week ago, Zach had listened intently while Chris had explained how he couldn't exactly bow out of his family's plans for the holiday. So even given the parameters of The Plan, he wouldn't "be available" to road trip or jet off wherever and whenever Zach wanted him to. 

Zach had nodded after Chris finished his little speech, his eyes narrowed as he considered. After a pregnant silence of Zach carefully smoothing down his suit sleeves and adjusting his cuff links, he had agreed that Chris could skip meeting him that week. 

Chris had deliberately not asked if that time off would extend The Plan by another week. Maybe it will, and maybe it won't, but he kind of assumes he'll be making up for it one way or another. 

So he's been home for four days, and he's got a week without classes and without Zach. It should feel like a break on all fronts, a relief even though he's got a bunch of reading to get through and an essay he's tinkering with. But instead Chris feels listless and jittery, too distracted to get much of his coursework done, too unmoored to sleep easily at night. 

Though it's usually pretty fun and chill to visit his family, he misses all sorts of cues and fumbles most of his lines. He forgets to pick up on his sister's teasing and bicker with her like usual (she and his mother exchange frowns when they think he doesn't notice). His dad sighs deeply around him a few times, a sure sign that Chris hasn't caught on to him making enthusiastic suggestions about what they should do the next day, or asking gentle questions about how things are going at school. 

"It's definitely not a girl," Chris mutters.

His mom pauses midway through reaching for the turkey baster while a series of complicated expressions flits across her face.

"You just seem so quiet -- quieter than normal, I mean." She takes a few steps closer and hesitates before reaching out to ruffle his hair. 

"I'm totally great, though; everything's awesome," he says too loudly, reflexively ducking away. 

She crosses her arms over her chest. "Okay. Well, you know whatever it is, you can always talk to me or your dad about it, right?" 

He presses his lips together and nods tightly, looks down before she can pick up on anything else. 

It's one thing if he doesn't feel like telling his mom about something. He's not big on talking about emotional junk, and his family expects him to clam up at first when he's anxious. Besides, excuses for him to act restless abound: summer plans on the horizon, senior year looming, stress about future prospects starting to threaten. Even the mundane work and due dates piling up for the current semester could justify how off-kilter he's acting. 

His mom hovers in the background in cases like this, waiting for Chris to come clean about whatever's preying on his mind. Maybe it's her training as a therapist, or maybe it's just the kind of thing any mom would do, intuiting something's gone haywire and keeping close until he's ready to confess. It's annoying, the way she always knows when something's up, but it's comforting at the same time, how she keeps an eye on him. 

But now, isn't it kind of dangerous too, how well she can read him?

First off, there's no way she's going to take it well if he says, "Hey, I don't think I mentioned this before, but I got in over my head racking up huge debts in illegal high-stakes poker games. And now there's this well-heeled scary gangster guy who's got me chipping away at the insane sum I owe him with extended make-outs and hand jobs."

So that's out.

There's also the matter of keeping things under wraps because of who the hell Zach is. Sure, there's no codicil to The Plan insisting that Chris keep things between them hush-hush. But he has to wonder if Zach wouldn't take kindly to Chris talking about him to anyone. Chris definitely doesn't want to find out what could happen if that's the case, especially if it's putting his family on the line.

"It's just, I worry," she continues as she reaches out, touches his tightly curled fist on the table with her small hand. 

He glances up, and fuck it all, she looks so earnest and hopeful that he's so close to blurting out something. 

But then Katie wanders in, mumbling, "Coffee?" and groping her way over to the counter where the insulated carafe is sitting. 

Soon his mom's fluttering around, chatting about pies and side dishes, and Katie's offering suggestions about how they should try new spins on traditional favorites, even though none of the crazy innovative ingredients she's rattling off are actually in the house. Moments later his dad arrives, with a jocular back-slap for Chris, a hug for Katie, and a tender kiss for their mom, before he launches into a way too detailed description of his plan for this year's turkey. 

Chris nods along to his dad's enthusiastic explanations and takes the refill of coffee Katie automatically pours for him and tries to smile at his mom when she catches his eye, and just pretends that everything really is utterly and completely normal.

* * *

"Bob, we brought you some wine we know you'll like, the pricey stuff," one of the neighbors, Mr. Levenson, jokes when he and his wife arrive for dinner. He displays the bottle so Chris's parents can make appropriately impressed noises. 

"Hey, you're spoiling us," Chris's dad says good-naturedly as he takes the bottle with a smile. When Katie peeks over his shoulder, standing on tiptoe, he turns it automatically so she can see the label. 

"You could cellar it a few years if you want," Mrs. Levenson remarks, over-enunciating the word "cellar," with a superior tone.

"Oh, no -- it's a holiday, and we're already celebrating, so we'd love to open it with you now," Chris's mom exclaims.

"Son, I know you probably don't get a chance to try this kind of thing at your frat parties," Mr. Levenson says to Chris, giving him an obnoxious wink. "But we've got to get some culture into you sometime, right?"

"The 2006 is a much better vintage, more subtle, with a deep, dark fruit palate," Chris says absently when he glances at the bottle. 

The sommelier at one of the upscale places Zach takes him had explained all about different Cabernet Sauvignon wines one night, after other diners were already long gone. When Chris had expressed interest, and at a slight nod from Zach, she'd devoted all her attention to them, pouring a custom wine flight of her favorite Napa Valley Cabs and talking effusively about notes of violets, plums and earth. Zach hadn't bothered to try any of the offerings himself. He'd just leaned back and watched, his eyes intent and covetous, as Chris swirled and sipped and swallowed each of the wines in turn. 

The conversation falters, and his dad stares at Chris strangely.

"Well, you've got the lingo down, at least! What are they teaching you up at Berkeley, huh?" Mr. Levenson asks with a wide grin. Everyone laughs. 

It's not until moments later, when Chris spots Katie's patronizing expression and his mom trying to hide a fond smile, that he realizes they think he's bullshitting them, maybe blustering to cover his embarrassment at being teased a little. 

His lips part to protest. But what's he supposed to do, explain how he's getting used to some of the finer things in life and tell them why the fuck that's happening? 

"Well, let's get some extra glasses!" his mom says, and hurries from the room.

* * *

Chris no sooner steps back into his dorm room with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder than he gets a text with the word "fiction," quickly followed by a new set of "be available" dates. 

It's already December, so as soon as he drops his bag on the floor and grabs a pen, he turns his generic calendar's page to the correct month. The new image features a blanketing of snow over a winding mountain path, a sunset casting a haze over the whole scene. 

He chews on his lip as he marks out the designated days, consulting the phone in his hand. 

When he's put down the info, he swipes his thumb over the new number, a slow stroke across the screen. Later he'll scribble it in the little moleskin he's been filling up with bits and pieces of Zach-ish info.

That's it for the moment. Zach obligations dispensed with. Staring at the numbers, though, Chris gets the strangest impulse: he could text back, "Miss me?" and see how Zach replies. 

Would Zach read the question while he's stationed in the corner of some private club in L.A., his mouth quirking as he scans the words and lifts a glass of amber liquid to his lips? Would he hear the tone signaling a new text while he's in the back of his personal car, cradling the phone in his broad hand, on route to a business meeting Chris definitely doesn't want to know the first thing about? Or would he glance at the screen one last time just when he sets the phone down on his bedside table, thumbing in the code to see Chris's message right before he slowly begins to unbutton one of those finely woven shirts of his?

He's on the verge of doing it. Why the fuck not? Two words. It doesn't have to mean a goddamn thing.

But what if the message goes to Sal or Nino instead of Zach?

The very thought makes Chris's shoulders spring up to his ears with tension. Sure, Sal's gotten friendlier the more he and Chris encounter each other. He joshes Chris about the state of his stretched-out t-shirts (mainly so he can extoll the virtues of his masterful tailor), or offers to stop for espresso when he's taking Chris back to campus ("Help you with all that studying, huh?" he'll say affably, bumping his shoulder against Chris's while Chris tries not to wince, because Sal's built like a Mack truck). 

And though Nino remains polite but distant, eyes often scanning over Chris only on the way to focusing on something else, he's accustomed to having Chris around as part of Zach's retinue. Or at least, he's ready to group Chris among the other items Nino will answer to Zach for, should anything happen to them (like the car, the L.A. place, whatever was in the open trunk that one time when Chris reflexively peered in and Nino shut it quietly).

Even so, Chris doesn't like picturing either of them in the middle of his thing with Zach.

The pen falls from his hand with a clatter. 

Chris doesn't even kick off his sneakers before he turns so he can fall face-first onto his futon and groan into the cushion. 

His thing with Zach. It's this what-the-fuck-is-his-thing-with-Zach that's been setting him on edge the entire break.

It needles Chris that they're basically a month and a half into The Plan, and there's still been no call for reciprocation. Maybe that unspoken reprieve should make Chris relax. Hey, at least Zach isn't yanking Chris's hand over to wrap it forcibly around his dick or insisting Chris offer his ass up pronto, right? 

Except it's fraying Chris's nerves, brooding over when exactly Zach's going to turn the tables. He's been worrying about it when he watches the runway lights at Oakland from Zach's private plane, even as he chats with Vinnie (the attentive regular flight attendant) about how his online real estate classes are going. He's been stressing over it when he sprawls on the campus green while he's ostensibly scratching out essay ideas. And he's fretting about it when he hangs out with his friends at popular joints near campus, watching his buddies pour cheap beer from pitchers but really only seeing Zach's throat working as he savors a sip of bourbon. 

Now he gropes blindly for his pillows, piling them over his head until there's a plush cave blocking out most of the light. 

He'd been a Grade A bonehead to think he was handling the switcheroo from Zach to non-Zach life like a pro.

* * *

Chris wakes up the next morning all at once, drool dried at the corner of his mouth and sweaty in his jeans and crumpled cardigan, every wheel in his mind already spinning about his thing with Zach.

Because come on, what the fucking fuck? _Why_ hasn't Zach tried to get Chris to do anything? At this point anyone would agree it's fair for Zach to demand a little action in exchange. Not because of the gambling debts Chris owes, but because, you know. The guy is getting him off regularly. It seems dickish Chris isn't giving him a hand in return.

He can't tell if they're maintaining status quo because Zach is holding true to his promise that Chris will want everything they do. Or maybe Zach's waiting for Chris to give some standard gay-coded indication that he's okay with wrapping his fingers around another guy's cock. After all, Chris had insisted pretty adamantly about not being gay right at the start there, but. The idea of trying a few things out freaks him out way less these days. 

It's just hard to imagine how Chris can work into a conversation, "I might be cool with handling your junk if you want," in a totally organic way.

Or possibly Zach hasn't asked for anything in return from Chris because he has some bizarrely gentlemanly idea of how The Plan should go. It's like a super magnanimous manner of arranging sex compensation, Chris thinks randomly while rushing through a shower (and subsequently choking on the mouthful of water he takes in as he sputters). 

He even catches himself, while he waits in line to grab a sesame bagel before his afternoon Econ lecture, wondering if maybe he should just appreciate Zach's patience. It's pretty human of him not to lean on Chris about it.

But any stray idea about Zach's leniency with sex stuff takes Chris back to the hot winds and the showy spray of sand back in the desert, to Nino's pointed speech about Zach's "generosity."

As much as Chris likes to fuzz out the lines that delineate what he's doing, he's got to remind himself that, hello, none of this is anything he opted for. As understanding or tolerant as Zach seems in Chris's crazy formulations of who's doing what to whose dick, Zach's still the one holding all the cards. 

It's like the most gallant mind fuck Chris can think of. Sure, Zach isn't forcing anything on him, but that's exactly what's got Chris obsessing how and when he's going to offer back. Hell, it's not even just Zach fucking with his head; no, Chris is performing the mind fuckery on himself _for free_.

Well, fuck Zach, because Chris can man up, right? He'll work over Zach's prick until Zach comes so damn hard that those intent brown eyes go dazed and roll back --

Chris's head falls into his shaking hands as he sits at the desk that night in his dorm room, trying to focus his attention on his upcoming French presentation. He feels wobbly and confused and angry and god damn it, completely turned on at the thought of Zach's eyes widening, Zach breathing hard, Zach losing control. 

In the end Chris has to beat off furiously in the shower and then eat two acia berry chia bars and a whole bag of chocolate covered pomegranate seeds just to take the edge off.

* * *

So maybe it's not for the best of reasons or a good reason at all the next time they're together (in the private back room of some club in San Francisco that Chris thinks maybe Zach owns, the way everyone practically genuflects to him and how no one ever bugs them when they slip into the room they're in) that he defiantly drops his hand into Zach's lap while they're making out before Zach can do the same to him. 

It's almost disappointing when Zach doesn't act surprised, or tell Chris he doesn't have to, or fall all over himself thanking him. He just takes Chris's hand and guides it smoothly, molding his fingers to wrap around Zach's hard on through his trousers and starting him on a slow rhythm.

It's clearly the starter version of a hand job, and a wash of gratitude almost bowls Chris over. Okay, good, it's clearly cool with Zach for him to begin with the remedial level. 

Two or three hesitant strokes in, though, resentful determination sweeps back in. It's all the messed up head games and grateful bullshit all over again. Plus, does Zach think Chris isn't ready for the big leagues or something?

So Chris tightens his jaw and very deliberately knocks Zach's hand to the side so he can start on Zach's zipper. Because he can control some of this too, goddamn it. He doesn't need Zach walking him through his paces like he's a novice around dicks. It's just a matter of getting the angle right, mirroring the grip he uses on himself. 

Of course none of that prepares him for Zach so hard in his hand, the heat and pulse of him, or the way Chris (totally on his own initiative and without thinking it through) traces the mesmerizingly fuzzy line of hair from Zach's navel to his groin and massages at the soft skin at the base of Zach's erection. It doesn't prepare Chris for how they both watch together as the head of Zach's prick thrusts in Chris's fist, how warm Zach's breath feels on Chris's cheek, or the way Zach's cock throbs as he finally starts to come with a low brutal grunt. 

"Look at you, you're so brave," Zach says after, murmuring into Chris's ear before he bites the lobe. There's only a thread of mockery in the words; the rest seems genuine, actually impressed. Of course that sincerity ultimately makes Chris want to disappear into a hole in the ground, because just a few notes of Zach's fucking admiring tone and Chris flushes immediately in a rush of pleasure. 

He's grateful Zach moves right from nuzzling the shell of his ear into a deep kiss, because otherwise he'd for sure watch the blush on Chris's cheeks with avid fascination, grinning like he does whenever he gets his way. And at least now, when Zach tilts Chris back on the couch and roughly undoes Chris's jeans and works a hand in to grasp his cock, well. It kind of feels like this time, Chris has earned it.

* * *

His thing with Zach builds from there -- both of them jerking each other off in the same time in the back of a limo, Chris muttering, "fuck, yes," when Zach cups his balls with his free hand and cradles them almost exactly like Chris had shown him he liked the very, very first time. 

At times Zach will kiss Chris voraciously for so long that Chris is the one who starts. He'll either stuff his hand down Zach's pants (belatedly working open his fly with a huff when Zach laughs darkly) or he'll press his hard on against Zach's thigh while they're making out, his hips working more insistently until Zach cottons on and draws him out (usually accompanied by knowing whispers about how "someone's eager"). 

Sometimes Zach likes to work Chris up first, not letting Chris touch him, smiling while Chris flails around and pants. Then he'll raise an eyebrow and drop his hand and wait, just wait like he's got all day, until Chris mutters under his breath and starts in on Zach in return. 

It's not just the exchanges of The Plan that change, either. Things get more handsy generally: Zach pushes Chris's t-shirts up and strokes over his bare chest on multiple occasions with increasing intent until Chris gets the hint and just flings his shirts off near the start. It's like, he's going to do stuff with Zach anyway, right? So he might as well make it a little easier. And it's not like it's the worst thing in the world to lie back when Zach pushes with a firm hand at the middle of his chest, if Zach's going to draw his teeth over Chris's nipples and lick and mouth and suck until Chris makes incoherent noises that sound an awful lot like begging.

Zach's loosened collars give way to discarded ties and unbuttoned finely tailored dress shirts. Chris starts to think distractedly of the way Zach looks in the tight white tank-tops he wears underneath at the most inconvenient times (like when he's with his study group for European Intellectual History II while everyone else perfunctorily discusses what might be on the final before they get to the real bone of contention, where they should order pizza from). 

At least Zach hadn't made any smart remarks the first time Chris had squared his shoulders and pawed at Zach's torso in return. Though Chris was pretty sure Zach hadn't needed to look quite so goddamn smug after, when Chris had splayed his palm over Zach's impressively defined chest and taken a shaky breath.

If nothing else, getting his hands on Zach more is major inspiration to hit the gym regularly. Zach is seriously built though not at all bulky; he's like some kind of masculine ideal under those expensive suits of his. Before he knows it, Chris starts to roll his eyes at men so pumped up they're about to pop out of their t-shirts with gross veiny arms. And other times, when he's in the weight room on campus, his eyes linger on guys at the gym who have nice definition, subtly corded arms and strong but slim thighs. 

And then he drops his gaze and his body to the mat and does push-ups until his face isn't burning scarlet anymore.

Chris even starts to imagine the feel of Zach in his hand when he's all alone in his dorm room and clearly free to think of whomever the fuck he wants. It's not like Zach pops into his head every time, sure. But when it's late at night and the asshole down the hall finally stops blaring "Hotel California" on repeat and Chris finishes turning the pages of small print Victorian novels that he reads to relax ("You go through this stuff after you have to read literature all fucking day?" John asks once, brandishing Chris's spine-cracked copy of _Little Dorrit_ accusingly) -- well, yeah, it's not weird that Zach's strong-featured face, his low rich voice, the scent of him when Zach gives Chris that slow sure smile of his and leans in, all crowd into Chris's thoughts. Zach's the person Chris sees the most of these days, after all, and the only person Chris messes around with lately. Why wouldn't he think of Zach when he's turned his light out?

Besides, it's not so bad, really, all the Zach stuff. Now that things are more mutual, Chris is in the rhythm of things as the short days in December fly by: driving here, flying there, better booze, fine dining, and the sheen of amber in Zach's eyes when they're both close, so close, before his dilated pupils nearly eclipse his irises. 

So everything's cool for now. Sure, Chris is staring down another two weeks at home when he hits winter break, which might not be his usual awesomely relaxing two weeks of sleeping late and getting spoiled by his mom and going skiing up in Tahoe that it usually is, considering how weird things got over Thanksgiving. And obviously finals are right around the corner, and no matter how much Chris preps ahead of time, he knows his anxiety's going to spike right when they hit exam week. Also, okay, it's not like Zach's going to be cool with just hand jobs forever; no doubt there's a big shoe waiting to drop with The Plan, probably one that involves Chris's ass.

But it's totally fine. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine, because Chris is on the fourth draft of his Chaucer essay already, he's got all the trickiest French idioms scribbled on sticky notes all over his dorm room, he's met with his Econ T.A. so frequently that Tay's asked Chris to read his little brother's prep school entrance essay, and his European Intellectual History II study group gets so intense that when two people in it hook up, there's an emergency meeting to discuss whether their relationship will fuck with the dynamic of the group. And if Zach's about to pull a fast one on Chris, well, Chris hasn't picked up on any of his tells yet. 

Plus, with all that cab fare Zach doles out every time he sends Chris off on a plane ride, Chris can spread around the green more freely. He picks up rounds of drinks when he's out with friends. He buys Christmas presents for his mom and his sister early, way nicer ones than he'd usually be able to afford. He actually puts money in a savings account with vague thoughts of taking his dad on a fishing trip come summer. 

Even with all those outlays, though, Chris has got a growing stack of hundred dollar bills that he keeps stashed in a lockbox in his closet. He'd had to move the money out of his second bureau drawer after the day John started to rummage around, looking for a spare sweatshirt. Chris had almost tripped over his own feet darting across the room before John could discover the pile of cash. 

John probably still tracks that Chris is doing stuff for Zach. He'd raised the topic of "Mister Mob Boss" here and there, when they were alone, and asked a couple of times, "So, what's shaking with whole debt thing?" 

But when Chris had insisted it was cool, or had shrugged off John's gentle pushes with vague reassurances, John had eventually let it go. 

Once in a while when they're hanging in Chris's room, John's warm eyes will flick up to the calendar on Chris's wall, and he'll look like something's bugging him. But he's easy-going about getting diverted when Chris suggests they go get a pile of tacos or hints they should text a guy John knows who's always got weed.

Anyway, it wasn't just to put John off the scent, that Chris had moved the money to a safer location. Really, the wads of cash had already begun to strain against the rubber bands Chris had wound around them, so it was definitely time for another plan. 

And now that Chris takes the accruing bills more seriously (he gets a little rush every time he sees that somber lockbox with its combination pushbuttons in the corner of his closet, picturing the hoard of cash behind the nondescript black door), it's hard not to wonder what other kinds of plans he could have for the money. 

The funny thing is, he runs into casual poker games all the time, at parties held off campus, in the back rooms of area bars. He knows he's better than most of the people he sees playing; he hadn't been kidding Zach and Nino back at that first meeting when he'd assured them he'd won plenty of games before his luck had gone sour.

Sure, he'd more or less nodded along when Zach had advised him to stay away from gambling. And yeah, he had agreed that theoretically it wasn't a great idea for anybody to gamble on the daily. A guy had to watch that kind of thing. 

But if the games were only every so often, and the payout was going to be really big, that was totally different, right?

So when Marty (the asshole from Chris's Econ class who had tipped Chris off to the game that had gotten him in this fix in the first place) tells Chris about another high-stakes thing, Chris doesn't miss a beat before he says, "Count me in."

Yeah, he'd lost big time the last attempt, he reminds himself when he heads back to his dorm to change into a clean t-shirt and count out the bills into neat piles. And sure, that had led to the whole mess with Mr. Mangianelli and then the meeting with Zach in the desert, and The Plan. 

But what if this time he wins?

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter of this story will go up on Thursday, my posting day at WiP Big Bang! 
> 
> So, yes, we have almost arrived at the end of this particular story, but I want to let everyone following along know that Fiction Romance is in fact the first in a series of stories about rentboy Chris and mob boss Zach. I'm still working out how I will write and share subsequent stories (in small installments, or in larger, longer arcs). But if you've been enjoying this fic, I hope you'll stay tuned for future updates. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone leaving kudos and comments! Your responses have been encouraging and fabulous and I will horde them all the way Chris hordes Zach's cab moolah!


	5. Chapter 5

When Chris finally arrives at the back door alley of the busy Italian restaurant Marty had given him the address for, and heads through the kitchen's meat locker to the enormous back room, he sees huge dudes in cheap shiny suits already herding players toward tables. There's a buzzing in the back of his head, and he has to bite back a laugh because yeah, this looks insane and awesome and he's going to own his table tonight. 

Surveying the crowd is an older woman wearing a fuchsia track suit and lots of flashy gold jewelry. Her long hot pink nails trace a groove down the small clipboard she holds while she looks disdainfully around the room. 

"Am I too late to get in on the first game?" Chris asks her anxiously. "I mean, hi. Ma'am. Um. How are you?" He clears his throat. "So --"

She snorts. "Name?"

"Chris, Chris Pine," he tells her. 

While she consults her list he glances over her shoulder. Two dour looking guys sit at a long table with ledgers, taking accounts. 

"I don't got you on here," she says. Her eyes narrow as she takes him in. 

"Okay," he says politely, even though he's starting to jitter where he stands. He's pretty sure this is a one-night show, so if he wants to play he has to get in on it right now. "I should be on the list, though? Marty said to mention him -- Emerson Martin?" 

Over at the threshold to the room, Chris can see one of the huge dudes waving off two men trying to enter, turning them away from the game. "It's cool, I'm good for it," Chris hastens to add. "I've got the buy-in right here."

When he looks back to the woman she's watching him closely, a faint air of recognition on her face. "What'd you say your name was?"

"Chris Pine?" His voice breaks a little and he clears his throat again. He pulls out the wad of cash for his entry fee and thrusts it at her.

She makes a face at the bills like they're not neatly folded or smoothed out enough for her, but soon enough she's efficiently counted them out against her clipboard. "Table Six," she says at last before turning her back on him and heading toward the men with the ledgers. 

He fumbles toward the right table, swerving around guys wearing aviator glasses indoors and women who laugh brashly even though it doesn't sound like anyone's cracking jokes. Most of the tables seem nearly settled, ready to start. 

When he finally sits down, taking one of the last two empty seats at Table Six, he nods to the other players. One or two of them acknowledge him in return; the rest look like they're zoned out, focused only on the upcoming game.

A young woman comes by and sets down Chris's chips, his starting store for the game. He grabs the stacks and pulls them toward him, that familiar flare of elation flickering at the sight of the brightly-colored round disks. He can hear the clink of the chips from the other tables as their rounds start; looks like he really did make it just in time. As soon as they get the last person to join their table, it's on. 

"Hey. That's my seat," some goombah announces. He plants himself behind Chris and glares.

"Uh, I'm right where I'm supposed to be, Table Six," Chris says. "There's a free seat right over there, buddy." He folds his hands together to keep them from shaking. In his head he's already gearing up for the game, getting riled just imagining the pitch of the cards, the way the players will scan their hands, those tense moments in the game before someone antes up or folds. Just sitting here sends a heady cocktail surge of excited adrenaline through him; he swears he's about to start vibrating in his seat. No way is he letting this bozo get on his already taut nerves and spoil his pre-game buzz. 

"I'm not your buddy, and I don't give a shit what table they told you. That chair where you parked your ass is mine," the guy enunciates slowly. 

Before Chris can tell off Mister Specific Chair, the dealer says, "Gentlemen, settle down," albeit without much interest. 

"Don't you lot worry, I've got your solution," a grinning guy seated at the other side of the table says out of nowhere. "You can have my seat, mate." His grin gets wider as he nods to the goombah and stands. "I was just leaving anyway." He turns the seat out invitingly, even brushes it off. 

The first dude stares hard at Chris, like he's got half a mind to throw a punch his way just for the hell of it. But then he stalks over to take the offered seat. 

A woman with an elaborate platinum wig sighs deeply and points at the player who gave up his chair, now walking away in no particular hurry. "Where's he going? Now we're missing one. I'm fucking sick of waiting for this game to start."

"The player will have ten minutes to return before his seat is forfeit," the dealer says to no one in particular. 

"What kind of accent was that anyway?" the elderly man next to Chris mutters. "Australian?"

Chris doesn't answer but he glances back at the man still making his way out. Why the hell would he take off before the tournament's even begun, losing thousands of dollars right off the bat? 

The maybe-Australian man ambles right over to the exit and says something to one of the gigantic guys keeping guard. When the dude peers over, Chris snaps his gaze back to the people seated around him. He doesn't have time to worry about some knucklehead who forfeited for no good reason; he has to psych himself up to read the table and keep a cool head. 

"We need a prop player," the dealer calls out after the requisite ten minutes are up. 

Of course it takes a while for the house to send someone over, and the grumbles around the table increase to a steady hum. But finally a blank-faced man takes the last empty seat so that the game can get going.

"All right, ladies, gentlemen, are you ready?" the dealer finally asks. At the general irritated mutter of agreement, he shuffles the deck thoroughly, getting ready to pitch the cards.

"Hang on a sec. Stop right there," the woman in the track suit says brusquely as she makes her way over. "This one's out."

Everyone immediately glances at the other players to see who the problem is. Chris eyes the beady-eyed old guy who'd asked about accents; he seems shifty and maybe a little bigoted.

When she taps the tip of one of her talon-like nails on Chris's shoulder to get his attention, though, he looks at her in disbelief. "Me? What are you talking about? I paid in cash; you just took my buy-in like twenty minutes ago!"

"Sorry, hon," she says, though she doesn't sound the least bit sorry.

"No, I bought my way in, and I'm playing," Chris says desperately. His heart's starting to pound and his breath is coming shorter and shorter. He grips the table with both hands; like hell is he giving up his seat.

"Jimmy," she says in a gruff voice. "Leo. A little help here." 

Seconds later, two sets of burly arms take hold of Chris, and he's summarily hauled out of his seat, scratching at the surface of the table as he's yanked away.

"Jimmy, Leo, listen, can we talk about this?" Chris chokes out even as he tries to twist out of the guys' grip. They handle him like he's a feisty but easily managed kitten, grabbing under his armpits, keeping his hands out of the way, and then lifting and dragging him until the scuffed toes of his Vans begin to skim along the carpet. "This is so not cool -- hey, watch it," he snaps at the one on his right, who looks supremely unimpressed.

"This way, sir," one of them says in a gravelly voice, like he's escorting Chris instead of hefting him toward the exit. 

"What the fuck, I don't get what went wrong," Chris says wildly. He's so close -- his chips sit on the table, just waiting for him -- he's got to play tonight, got to win. He thrashes, but it doesn't help to loosen their clutches. "I paid -- ask that lady -- the first round hasn't even started! I'm not cheating or anything! What the hell, man? Come on, everyone here can tell you this isn't fucking fair!"

Around the room, heads turn to him briefly before the other players train their eyes back on their cards.

The two men muscle him out of the room, not through the meat locker but by way of another, hidden entry point. 

"Hey, where are you taking me?" Chris protests. 

They emerge outside in another alley, even danker and smellier than the first one Chris had taken to reach the game. 

And a few feet away, there's a limo idling.

Before Chris can follow up his involuntary alarmed noise with actual coherent words, the two burly guys open the limo door and shove him inside.

He lands on his hands and knees, breathing hard. His eyes swim with tears of anger and confusion; the distortion tinges the grey of the vehicle's carpet to a murky dark blur. 

"Nino?" he asks incredulously as soon as he raises his head. Yes, there's Zach's sometimes Silent Associate sitting stiffly on one of the limo's leather seats. 

Nino doesn't acknowledge Chris with a nod like he usually does. He merely extends his hand to thrust an open flip phone in front of Chris's face.

Befuddled, and still on the floor of the limo, looking up from hands and knees like he's partway in cow's pose, Chris grabs the cell phone and lifts it to his ear.

"Christopher," Zach's low voice says through the receiver. "You are trying my patience severely."

* * *

Before Chris can reply to Zach, the call ends.

Chris looks to Nino in shock, total _do you believe this fuckery?_ clear on his face. But Nino stares straight ahead in clear do-not-engage mode.

The car pulls out of the alley, starting down a series of side-streets that Chris doesn't recognize. 

Chris clambers up onto the seat after several minutes spent stewing in an angry heap on the floor. As mad as he is, it's not like he's going to spend the whole trip, wherever the fuck they're headed, without a seatbelt on.

After he flings himself into place and clicks in, he crosses and uncrosses his arms tightly across his chest several times before he says, "So Zach's the one who got me kicked out of there?"

No reply.

"Never mind how the hell he even knew I was at the game," Chris fumes. Obviously someone in the room -- Fuchsia Track Suit Lady? Beady-Eyed Accent Hater? -- had tipped Zach off. Which is even more fucked up, because how would they _know_ to tip Zach off? 

Maybe Chris should have thought about how far Zach's reach goes before he'd gotten in on an area tournament. Next time, he'll go further afield and avoid this bullshit entirely. 

"Seriously, though, what gives him the right?" he adds as the stony silence continues. "It's not like he gets to dictate what I do twenty-four seven! I mean, who does he think he is?"

Nino spares him a single skeptical look.

"We're going to see him right now, aren't we?" Chris asks. The answer is obvious, but his stomach sinks in anticipation. 

Again, there's no direct response. 

They drive for forty minutes, give or take, and Nino doesn't say word one to Chris the entire time. 

If it had been Sal, maybe it would have been different; Chris could probably have wheedled info out of him. Sal likes to ramble to Chris about his problems with his girl, and how she keeps threatening to tell his wife about them. When Chris offers vague guarded advice, Sal sometimes gives him a friendly punch in the arm and says, "You're all right, kid." Sal always asks about Chris's antics at college and shakes his head, grinning and saying, "The shit you must get up to!" Chris doesn't have the heart to tell him about all the studying and essay editing he does instead of the partying Sal obviously imagines.

But Nino has always been Zach's Serious Business guy. Even while trying to keep himself in the dark as much as possible, Chris has gradually figured out that Nino is the one who gets called on deck to intercede when the real problems loom. 

Looks like this time Chris is the problem.

* * *

Eventually they end up at a hotel in some San Francisco suburb.

Chris had been too busy going over every messed up part of this situation in his head, adjusting the stream of invective he wants to hurl in Zach's face the first moment he sees him, to pay much attention to the freeway signs. When they took the exit, though, Chris had startled back to awareness, glanced out the tinted window and contemplated (for all of five seconds) trying to roll out of the moving car to make a break for it. But no doubt the doors are locked and controlled. Besides, where the fuck would he run to? How far would he have to go to evade Zach's control?

Nino steps out carefully, scans the area, and gestures for Chris to walk through the parking lot toward the upscale brick structure some hundred feet away.

Even after he slides out and takes a few steps forward, though, Chris glances back at the car. The driver and another guy from the front seat are just getting out onto the asphalt. Usually when that kind of thing happens it's because everything's basically chill and they're taking advantage to have a smoke break. But now the men stand, arms crossed as they stare back at Chris evenly, watchful and ready.

Soon enough they reach the parking lot entrance. On the other side of the back door waits another one of Zach's goons, a guy Chris has only seen a time or two before this. The man's eyes flicker to him briefly as he opens the glass door to let them in. This time Nino leads the way, Chris trails after him resentfully, and Acquaintance Goon takes up the rear. 

In the elevator, the two other men wave him to the back wordlessly and take up positions at the front of the compartment, effectively blocking the doors while the car climbs smoothly upward. The elevator stops twice at the summons of other hotel guests, who blink in consternation at the well-dressed powerfully-built men obstructing their path. But when Acquaintance Goon suggests, "How's about you get the next one, pal?" in his gritty voice, the people waiting make nervous but agreeable noises and quickly busy themselves looking elsewhere. 

Finally they reach the top floor, the level where they usually keep the deluxe suites. The men get in the same formation, Chris in the middle, and trudge along the hallway until they reach what seems like the furthest room.

When Acquaintance Goon flourishes a key card, Chris flattens his lips together and squares his shoulders. So Zach thinks he can basically kidnap Chris -- like, for the second time, come to think of it -- and pretend he owns Chris's entire life, oversees every decision he makes? Well, fuck that. Chris agreed to the goddamn Plan, and he's doing his part -- more than doing his part, really. He's making out with Zach and getting him off and doing stuff he'd never thought he'd end up doing. The rest of the time is his, for fuck's sake. He doesn't answer to anyone when he doesn't have to "be available," and he's more than ready to remind Zach of that little fact. 

But when the open door reveals only a small empty entryway, no Zach in sight for Chris to yell at immediately, Chris's throat closes. Unconsciously, he takes a little step backward.

He only realizes he's done it when he makes contact with Acquaintance Goon's meaty hand, stalling Chris with light pressure at his shoulder. 

"Better get in there," Acquaintance Goon advises in a low voice.

"Aren't you guys coming?" Chris asks halfheartedly. It's not like he thinks that Nino and Acquaintance Goon are going to provide a diversion or stick up for him or anything. But despite his plan to walk in angry and give Zach a piece of his mind for being a controlling weirdo, confrontation doesn't seem like such a hot idea anymore.

"Mr. Quinto wishes to see you alone," Nino tells him. Chris can't tell if there's really the barest trace of sympathy he hears in Nino's somber tone, or if that's just Chris's wishful thinking. 

"Great," Chris mutters, and heads on in.

The door clicks shut, and Chris takes a deep breath and kicks off his Vans while he tries to figure out what's coming next.

The corridor to the left is dim, but a light shines faintly from the one to the right. So Chris hesitates only a few seconds before he heads that way. 

The hall opens into a large seating room with floor to ceiling windows, ornamental couches and chaises. There's an inset dining area with an ostentatious chandelier, a retro bar on the far right of the room with shiny red leather stools, but no Zach.

Chris swallows and listens to his own gulp in the quiet surroundings. 

Then he hears a familiar clink, the sound of a glass tumbler making contact with a surface. He whips his head around, but, no, it's not where he is. It's coming from a room off the seating area, probably a bedroom.

"Okay, okay, okay," Chris says under his breath and makes his way toward it. 

On a modern black leather couch facing the door sits Zach, an ankle crossed over his thigh. Still in his fine suit, tie impeccably fastened, his cufflinks gleaming in the low light, he's seemingly relaxed yet clearly aware of the image he's cultivating. It's almost like he's deigned to appear in a chi-chi magazine advertisement selling the high life.

His eyes sweep over Chris as he enters the room, but Zach says nothing, just lifts his glass to take another sip of his drink.

Chris halts and stands there awkwardly, uncurling and curling his fists, sweating even though the room's probably perfectly comfortable. "I just thought," he begins weakly and trails off. So much for his indignant diatribe. 

"I am very disappointed in you, Christopher."

Chris's eyes widen and his cheeks start to burn. He ducks his head, frowning at his feet.

"I expressly told you to keep away from the cards. And what did you go and do?"

"So, I never actually agreed to that," Chris says sullenly to his bare feet. His shoulders tense up almost to his ears at what's coming out of his mouth, but he's going to get through some of what he rehearsed in his head even if it kills them. "You _said_ I should, yeah, and then you said 'Do you agree.' But I never came right out and said --" 

"Shut up." 

Chris winces when his teeth clench together too quickly. 

The next _clink_ of the glass when Zach sets it down on the side table echoes in Chris's aching head with ominous finality. 

Zach rises to his feet, hands in his pockets, and strolls over to Chris, slowly circling around him. "You like to go looking for trouble, don't you?" he murmurs.

Chris shakes his head, though Zach's walking behind him, so he's not sure if he sees. 

"What was that?"

Chris chews on his lower lip. Is he supposed to answer or not? The silence only grows, so he mumbles, "When I came in, I was about to explain, but you told me to shut up, and --"

"Oh, so you were paying attention to me that time?" Zach inquires. "But we both know you like to ignore some of what I tell you. Isn't that right, Christopher?"

Chris blinks, swaying where he stands while Zach treads an unhurried path around him. "I don't know," Chris says after a pause. 

"You don't know," Zach muses as if he's truly curious. "All right. Let's find out what you do know. How much were you in debt when we first met?" 

Chris stammers out the sum. He's memorized the figure, even though he still keeps the piece of paper Nino originally wrote it on (taped to the underside of his bedside table).

"Well, well. So you were listening." Zach stops in front of Chris and smiles that shark-like grin of his. "See, I wasn't sure. Usually when a man hears something like that and realizes he's gotten in way over his head, it's a wake-up call telling him he shouldn't fuck up like that ever again. And yet here we are." 

"I didn't even get to play," Chris says under his breath. It seems unfair he's getting castigated for something he didn't technically do. 

All at once, Zach's menacing smile disappears. But his tight jaw and grim expression are a million times worse. "So?"

"So, it's not like I lost my shirt! I might have won the whole thing tonight, or at least have come out ahead. But you had to go and pull me out before any of that could happen. Neither of us knows how it would have gone."

"I'll tell you how it would have gone. Those people would have taken you to the cleaners. And then you'd be in another fucking hole, with someone far less... flexible than I am about arranging payment. Is that what you want?"

"Fine, maybe I would have screwed up again and lost big time," Chris says. "Maybe I would have gotten in a fuck-ton of trouble!" His voice gets louder with every word. "But you know what? That has absolutely zero to do with you! I'm always there when you ask me to be, because that's what we settled, but that's where this ends. It's none of your business what the hell I do when we're not hanging out!"

Zach stares at him, and for a second Chris glimpses the wave of pent-up fury waiting to boil over his controlled façade. "See, Christopher, that's where you're wrong," Zach says softly. "Everything you do is my business."

In the very back of Chris's head, a tiny part of him starts whirring like a hamster on a wheel, readying potential reactions to that piece of absolute horseshit. Like maybe:

  * Saying, "No, everything I do isn't your business, you asshole. I agreed to The Plan, but I didn't agree to you running my entire life," and taking insanely huge chances on how fucking frightening Zach might be when he doesn't actually get his way.
  * Doing a fake-out to his left and then scrambling for the windows on the right (there has to be a fire escape somewhere if this place is up to code) and hightailing it to the nearest police station with promises of names and dates and numbers and whatever else will buy him his ticket off of this fucked up roller coaster ride.
  * Temporarily going along with everything Zach says, playing penitent until he can get back to his dorm room and seriously researching going to Korea. Screw John, Chris bets Cousin Henry is a really nice guy who would take Chris in and teach him how to make kimchi rice and let him forget about how there's a mob boss back in America who owns his ass in all kinds of ways.



None of the choices are fantastic options. Maybe that's why the major part of Chris's mind checks out on him entirely, and he does something way, way stupider. 

He licks his lips and stares at Zach's mouth -- he can't help it, not while the words, _Everything you do is my business, Everything you do is my business, Everything you do is my business_ repeat on a deepened slo-mo loop in his brain like the bass background to a chanteuse's seductive chorus. 

He takes a wobbly step closer to Zach, actually moves closer to the most dangerous dude for miles, which aptly demonstrates how this whole thing has managed to rewire Chris completely wrong. 

And last, with bare inches separating them, Chris involuntarily lets out the breathy, shaky sigh he only makes when he's really fucking turned on. 

It's like punching in the right codes to a reactor, how fast Zach wrenches Chris close after that. He grabs his upper arms so tight it would probably hurt like hell if Chris wasn't already a hundred percent focused on Zach's stiff erection pressed right against his own hard cock. 

He's had his hands on Zach's prick a bunch of times, knows the length and thickness of him by heart now. And he's felt that rigid heat against his thigh plenty when they're making out, before they start groping at each other.

But Zach surging against him, his hard on straining right up against Chris's dick, even still separated by layers of clothing -- they've never done this before. How have they never done this before? This, what they're doing right now, this is _amazing_. It never for one second occurs to Chris to wig out about another boundary knocked down, because he's so busy letting his head tilt back as he moans and crowding as close to Zach's body as possible.

Zach snarls in his ear and tears Chris's t-shirt over his head before he twists Chris back into position. If he weren't holding Chris up, Chris would probably fall to the ground like a puppet with clipped strings. He can't think, can't remember the rant he'd prepared, can't do anything but push as close as he can get to Zach. He's entirely off balance, already stumbling back when Zach bends to pull Chris's jeans and boxers down his legs. So when Chris's knees hit the mattress, it's easy as pie for Zach to shove him onto the bed.

Zach's already lost his tie and suit jacket by the point when he starts crawling on top of Chris, and that's so unlike him (he's meticulous about folding those expensive ensembles of his). But Chris can't spare an idle thought for that, not as Zach bites at the juncture of his neck and throat and Chris cries out in shock and pleasure. By the time Zach roughly arranges Chris's arms over his head and kicks off his own trousers, Chris has already spread his legs so Zach can settle between them. 

Besides that very first night when Zach had watched Chris, it's all been half-clothed fooling around: jeans and trousers gaping open, underwear yanked partway down, t-shirts and tank-tops rucked upward, sweaters or buttoned shirts balled on the floor (at least, Chris's stuff ends up like that, because Zach's not at all careful about a damn thing that comes off Chris's body). But now, when Zach impatiently flings off one of his torso-hugging ribbed white tank-tops, the only item separating them from rolling around one hundred percent naked together is Zach's pair of very small, very tight briefs. 

"Um," Chris starts to say. It's hard to get out much else with his eyes rolling back in his head and his mouth going slack.

It's just as well that Zach kisses the rest of his words away. Besides, what's Chris got to complain about at the moment? Sure, it's daunting that they're doing this whole new thing, but seriously, it's like a tsunami of sexy: Zach clamping Chris's wrists to the bed, thrusting his tongue between Chris's trembling lips until Chris starts sucking on it harder, rolling his hips to start an utterly overwhelming drag of their cocks against each other. 

They twist and grunt, turning twice on the king-sized bed so Chris finds himself briefly on top before he's pinned down in a new spot. Zach moves down to bite and lick roughly at Chris's armpits, and who the fuck knew that could feel so amazing? He can't figure out which part of him he wants to press against Zach's mouth more, his cock, his lips, his nipples. He's so far gone as he angles for any and all contact that he barely processes the small desperate sounds coming from his mouth.

The astounding craziness and awesomeness of it all is possibly why Chris doesn't completely realize he's skimming his recently-released hands down Zach's muscular back to settle hesitantly on the waistband of those tight briefs. 

He goes still for a second at the last barrier between them. 

It's the next thrust of Zach's cock against his that decides it, the talented way Zach circles his hips. As amazing as the feathery tease of soft cotton is between their erections, all Chris can think about now is skin on skin. 

When he actually hooks his thumbs into Zach's briefs, willing his trembling hands to ease them down, his mission's more clear. Zach grins at him again, wild and breathless, and reaches down to help.

As soon as Zach's completely naked and quickly catches them both in his large hand, Chris pants out, "Yeah, yeah, ungh," urgently and shimmies down on the mattress to get them lined up just right. 

It's a zillion times better with no boundaries, with Zach's hair rumpled and his dark eyes savage. Zach groans as he pulls back briefly to watch their pricks moving together, and his gaze doesn't waver even as he strokes one hand back and forth over his own chest. 

Chris makes a wordless protest at the sight. It's not until he flexes his fingers that he realizes Zach has briefly let go of his wrists. He could lift his tingling hands, drag his fingers across Zach's wiry chest hair, if he could just get it together with the whole coordination thing. 

It's even better, though, when Zach drops down to rest on his forearms on either side of Chris, compressing Chris's shoulders, to keep the angle and rhythm steady. Chris strains upward as best he can to capture Zach's mouth because he's close, he's so close, and he wants this so very much --

But then Zach lifts up on his knees, breaking the contact, his prick slapping against his belly. He gives Chris a roguish smile before he squeezes too hard around the base of Chris's cock. "You going to listen to me from now on?"

Chris mouth works a few times uselessly before he manages, "Wait, what? Come on, man, you gotta --" 

Zach lets him go entirely and Chris whimpers, tilting his pelvis up. 

"You going to be good?" Zach whispers. He watches Chris's face even as he slips his hand down to caress Chris's balls. 

Chris's legs kick as he moves restlessly, trying to increase the pressure and direct Zach's lightly stroking fingers. "I need -- I don't --"

"I want to see you be good for me," Zach says low. "Come on, Christopher. Be my good boy."

"Please," Chris says quickly; he's having trouble summoning whatever words Zach wants, but that's got to be a start. 

"Hmm." Zach traces a fingertip down Chris's throbbing cock. 

But when Chris tries to buck up against his hand, Zach squeezes Chris's thighs hard enough that Chris lets out a surprised yelp. The points of contact sting, like they're going to bruise. And that, that should make him flag, but instead Chris pants harder and squirms up against the pressure. 

"Shh, okay. You want this, don't you?" Zach asks a moment later. His fist wraps loosely around Chris's dick once again.

"Yeah," Chris says in amazement, because that's the entire point of everything between them, isn't it?

"All right. I'm going to give you what you need." Zach sits back on Chris's thighs, apparently heedless of his own painfully hard looking erection, and with his mouth quirked up, starts up a very deliberate pull along Chris's dick. 

There's a fizzy sensation at the back of his head, a flare of heat in his belly. Chris reaches for Zach right away, going for his hips. But Zach slaps his hands away lightly, shaking his head playfully like he's amused Chris attempted it. 

A few seconds later, Chris figures out Zach won't even let him touch his own damn self; when he tries to skim his fingertips across his belly, Zach makes a low warning sound. Chris's hips tilt up in response, like that drone is a homing call. With no other options, he fists the bedclothes and throws his head back. 

At least Zach ups the pace, smiling all the while, his eyes roving over Chris's writhing body. By the time he adds another hand back in to caress Chris's balls again and brush his thumb just behind them, Chris is snapping his hips in regular counterpoint, doing whatever he can to chase after what he wants.

It's when Zach takes that other hand back to fist his own dick, letting out one of those low grunts he usually makes right before he's about to shoot, that Chris says, "Oh," faintly and tries to sit up so he can get closer. Surely Zach's going to let him close now -- 

"Not yet," Zach says sternly, and fuck fuck _fuck_ , he's back to that constricting ring of his thumb and first finger around Chris's erection, and adding in a quick tug at Chris's balls just for the fun of it. It's starting to fucking hurt.

"Please, Zach, please, please," Chris pants out. He's got tears in his eyes, and he's tensed so tight his thighs are quivering and his calves are starting to throb.

Zach bends down, his lips not quite brushing Chris's mouth. When Chris numbly attempts to meet him partway, straining his neck, Zach keeps him in place with a firm hand locked on Chris's shoulder.

"I need to know you can listen to me," Zach breathes against Chris's lips.

"I'm listening," Chris bites out. "Seriously, I really am!" He tries to nod and look attentive, but he can barely focus on Zach's face at this point.

"You don't sound like you're ready to listen," Zach says, his head cocked to the side, considering.

Chris's head's starting to fog up and all he can do is look up at Zach, flummoxed and right on the edge and ready to pledge anything. "I'm ready, I'm -- Zach, I swear, can we just --" 

Zach moves back, like he's going to lift away entirely, and Chris makes a startled, frightened noise.

"Okay, baby, hang on," Zach soothes him. His warm hands stroke up and down Chris's sides like he's got all the time in the world. "All you have to say is that you're going to pay attention to me from now on. From now on, right?"

"Now on," Chris echoes. The words don't make much sense, but maybe he can get away with just relaying the sounds back. 

When he manages to focus and sees the skeptical look playing on Zach's features, he sobs out, "Please, Zach, I promise!"

"That's all I want," Zach croons, and then he's back on Chris again, blanketing him with warm weight. That slide of his hard cock against Chris's aching prick feels so fucking good that Chris quickly reaches down to grab Zach's ass so he can't move away from him as easily again. Zach lets out a rumbling satisfied sound and quickens the pace. 

This time when they get close, Chris wraps his legs around Zach, doing his best to trap him there as they thrust against each other. When Zach fucking finally mashes their mouths back together, Chris opens for him, locks his ankles around Zach's strong thighs, and comes hard. 

They shake together, hips working, harsh breathing reverberating around them. When Zach arches up with one last tremor and finally collapses onto Chris, Chris folds his arms across Zach's shoulder blades, burying his face in Zach's neck and letting the world slip away.

* * *

Chris wakes once during the night, momentarily baffled at the dim outlines of a room he doesn't recognize and the quiet hum of air-conditioning. 

Then he realizes where he is -- in the hotel room, on the king-sized bed, with Zach curled up close behind him. Hey, there's another first, because until now they haven't slept in an actual bed together. They're still naked and he can feel Zach's cock nestled against the small of his back. 

Before he can fidget or start to panic, though, Zach breathes out, "Hmmm," a deep considering sound, and slings a heavy arm around Chris's chest.

Chris shifts a little, his brain right on the verge of cycling through a litany of troubling thoughts. 

But Zach, still asleep, pulls him back so their bodies are flush against one another again. He mumbles something incomprehensible, his breath warm on Chris's ear.

It shouldn't feel welcome or comforting or right.

Chris wraps his arm over Zach's and settles against him as he closes his eyes.

* * *

The next time Chris opens his eyes, light streams into the room.

He stretches and automatically extends a hand to the other side of the bed. But there's no Zach, only tangled sheets, already cool to the touch.

"You're awake," Zach says briskly as he walks into the room adjusting his cuff links. 

He's immaculately dressed -- a different suit from yesterday, a subtle windowpane pattern this time, accented by a solid but textured tie and pocket square, all of it somehow both flawless and effortless.

Chris scrambles to sit up. When Zach's eyes drop appreciatively down his naked body, though, Chris flushes, and he tugs the top sheet up to his waist. 

"There's a car outside waiting to take you back," Zach tells him. His eyes sparkle, though, as they always do when he catches Chris blushing. "And your clothes are right there," he adds, gesturing to a neatly folded pile atop a chair. 

Chris can't confirm it at a glance, but his stuff looks like it's been laundered. He immediately does his level best to push out thoughts of who the hell came through the suite while he was still asleep and naked. Someone must have, to deliver Zach's fresh suit and collect Chris's clothes for cleaning. 

"There's no rush, however. Feel free to take a shower. You'll find platters from room service out in the other room if you're hungry." 

"Oh. Okay." Chris looks down at his hands twisted together atop the sheets and tries to gather his thoughts. He should probably say...something...but he has no idea what.

"Before I go," Zach says, and takes several steps to the bed to extend a card between two fingers.

Chris takes it automatically, flipping it over to the side with prominent text.

**_Zoe Saldana, Ph.D.  
Psychodynamic Therapy, Analysis, Family Therapy_ **

His head snaps up. "What the hell is this?"

"Every Tuesday, at 3pm, starting right after your winter break ends. The office is right in Berkeley, so I expect no problems with you getting to your appointments." 

"Are you kidding me?" Chris demands. 

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" Zach asks, groomed brows arching. "Oh, and Christopher? I don't want you lying to me about the cabs again."

Chris's face heats up so fast that he's sure his cheeks have gone full-on magenta. "I didn't, I mean," he starts.

"Skip the excuses. You take them, or I'll know. And no more gambling. You're through playing cards." 

"Is that what this is about?" Chris asks, staring at the elegant font on the embossed card. "You think --" He laughs; it sounds hollow. "I don't have an addiction to gambling, or whatever, and I don't need a shrink. So screw this --"

"This is not optional," Zach tells him flatly.

"I have class late Tuesday afternoon next semester," Chris blurts. It's the last card up his sleeve; if Chris ever mentions a due date or a standing academic thing, even if Zach never specifically promises The Plan won't interfere, he'll accommodate it.

Zach narrows his eyes. "Like hell you do. You haven't changed your schedule, Christopher."

He can feel his jaw drop. How the fuck does Zach know what Chris has registered for next term?

Well, no, of course he'd know somehow. Chris had learned last night not to underestimate what Zach can discover about him, hadn't he? 

But weirdly, that's not the sticking point for Chris right now. 

Chris stares at the card so he won't have to look at Zach's stern expression. "What is this?" he asks quietly. He doesn't just mean the new addendum to The Plan, or how Zach managed to swing getting Chris into some classy Berkeley therapy practice overnight. Anything that goes on between them is about Chris making up the debt he owes Zach, about Zach getting something that he wants in return. But Chris knows enough about this crap from his mom's work and Katie's studying and his own first-year Intro to Psych class to recognize psychodynamic therapy means long haul stuff. 

Why the fuck would Zach care what goes on in Chris's head after The Plan is over?

"It's the way things are from now on," Zach says. His forbidding expression says that's all he's willing to discuss at the moment. 

Chris shakes his head, checking out the street address on the card. What the fuck ever, if it's one more thing he has to do during these eight months of indentured sex slavery or whatever the hell it is -- these six-ish months, now, because every day that goes by is another day closer to the end of The Plan -- he'll just grit his teeth and get through it. He doesn't have to like it or play nice just because Zach's making him see a goddamn Ph.D. He doesn't have to speak at all at those fucking 3pm Tuesday appointments. And if this therapy lady thinks he's going to unburden all his problems so she can report every last detail back to Zach, well, then she couldn't be more wrong.

"Whatever. But I don't like the idea of you keeping tabs on me," Chris mutters. "Like, I don't know how you knew where I was last night. But if you're watching what I do on campus, that's fucking creepy, and I want it to stop."

Zach nods his head slowly, like he's pondering an offer. "The campus is yours," he says after a pause. It's exactly as though he's negotiating terms and territories with an associate who's under his thumb. "But don't abuse that concession," he adds.

 _It's not a concession; it's my goddamn life_ , Chris wants to say. But instead he nods shortly and turns over the card in his hands. 

"I have to leave for an appointment. I'll text you with future dates." Zach pauses as though he's waiting for an appropriate response. 

"Yeah, fine," Chris says under his breath, staring hard at the bedclothes. "I'll be available."

For a moment there's no sound. Then Zach's footsteps, hushed on the thick carpeting, pace off and fade away.

Chris lets go of the card and runs a shaky hand through his hair. He should definitely shower so he can get the hell out of here. There's dried spunk on him, and not all of it's his. 

Then Zach reappears suddenly in the doorway, his brows drawn together.

"What, um, hey. Did you forget something?" Chris asks, his eyes widening. Gone is the cool collected front from just moments ago; now Zach looks a little scary and a lot resolute and all kinds of hot.

Zach makes it over to the bed in three strides. When Chris looks up in mute confusion, Zach reaches out and grasps Chris's chin, tips his head up, and leans down to kiss him hard. 

Chris makes a small confused noise into the kiss, but barely two seconds go by before he's grabbing Zach's shoulders with both hands and kissing back hungrily. 

For a beat Chris thinks about easing Zach's suit jacket off his shoulders and finding out if the shower in the ensuite bathroom has enough room for two.

But Zach pulls back just a little, still brushing his lips over Chris's, no less intense but oddly gentle. 

And that's new, that's weird. Except it's not, not totally. 

Zach takes a deep breath and holds Chris's jaw in both hands, his eyes searching Chris's face. He kisses him one last time on the mouth before he presses a kiss to Chris's forehead. 

"I'll see you soon," he whispers. 

Then he turns and walks out, leaving Chris alone again.

***~* the end *~***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading! When I first began this story, I intended it to be a handful of PWP scenes. Haha, I have no idea why I think that will ever work anymore! Of course various plot points started to thread through the sex, and damn it, what was supposed to be a short-ish story has now turned into the first fic in a series. 
> 
> My plan is to write more stories for this series as inspiration strikes and other projects allow me the time to work on it. There are two more big arcs I'd like to pursue, so that might translate into two more stories in the series, or it might work out that I'll share shorter pieces of those arcs along the way. You may want to subscribe to this if you're curious to read more. 
> 
> All my appreciation goes to those of you who've taken the time to leave comments or hit that kudos button; I can't tell you how lovely it is to hear from you. I'm so glad I started sharing bits of what I called Pinto Rent Boy Fic on tumblr; I doubt I'd have turned this into a full story if I hadn't gotten such great encouragement there for my wacky ideas about mob boss Zach and awkward college student with gambling issues Chris. 
> 
> [silent-bridge](http://silent-bridge.tumblr.com/) very kindly created a gorgeous graphic for this story, and the image she made encouraged me so much as I was posting the chapters -- please do check out [her beautiful work](http://silent-bridge.tumblr.com/post/147046232889/fiction-romance-by-entrenous88-aka-rent-boy)! 
> 
> If you want, [check me out on tumblr](http://entrenous88.tumblr.com/) for both Pinto and Star Trek fangirling, writing talk, calls for prompts, and fic snippets. Thanks again!


End file.
